Wendeanne Ke’aka Stitt

Bay Area Asian/Asian-American/Pacific Islander Visual/Craft/Material Arts

Wendeanne Ke’aka Stitt is an award-winning quiltmaker and Hawaiian kapa (bark cloth) maker who has a 26-year history in the San Francicso Bay Area as a visual display artist.  A lifelong student of quilts and their makers, especially the Amish, she has developed a respect for women whose lives are spent working long days, caring for their families, and creating beautiful quilts.

 

Wendeanne is also one of the original founding members of Kulu I Ka Pono-The Kapa Project.  Upon completing her two-year apprenticeship, she has continued her learning with Kumu Dalani Tanahy (Makana, Hawaii) so that she may share her knowledge and kapa lineage with Hawaiians and Hawaiians-at-heart in California.  Because of her art background, she has been able to expand her learning to include the usage of native California flora in creating her designs and developing dyes.

In 2008, as a participant in ACTA’s Traditional Arts Development Program, Wendeanne traveled to Hawaii to attend the Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden, the Bishop Museum, and the Queen Emma Summer House Museum to research the plants used to make kapa cloth and view rare and private collections of kapa cloth.