Apprenticeship Program in 2011, two talented representatives of this art form, master artist Patricia Montgomery and her apprentice Helen Anderson of the East Bay area.
Patricia Montgomery is a master quilter who began her artistic career as a painter. She is grounded in the tradition of African American quilt making, yet offers wonderful innovations to the art form in various manners such as exploring new techniques, utilizing a vast range of materials, incorporating other visual effects, and engaging histories of other communities and their relationship to African American communities. She engages her art as a form of rhythm and as movement, especially in the process of stitching. Utilizing a sewing machine Montgomery shares ideas of “free motion” stitching, in which the quilter must literally guide or rather “push and pull” the material as if they were dancing with it. This ultimately creates a breath of movement within the quilt.
Montgomery is adamant about researching history, art, and culture, suggesting books, articles, and attending lectures to understand the landmark events that inform a group’s history as a whole. Today the stories presented through the quilts, however, are informed by both the documented and the local hidden stories that are maintained by a community, as well as by the artist’s re-vision of the stories. Through research, Montgomery also illuminates her knowledge of how different cultures processed fabrics, materials, and quilts to demonstrate a connection between the African American tradition of quilting to cultures in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These types of connections become realized in the types of exhibition in which Montgomery participates. For example, she has been a well-received artist in various Dia de los Muertos events and installations in the Bay Area for several years.
Helen Anderson completed three beautiful quilts during her apprenticeship with Montgomery. She shared that it was a process that moved from antagonism and contention, to “wandering” and exploration, finally arriving to a “healing” when she opened up to learning different techniques and ideas, and finding her own voice in the artistic tradition. She shared that it was this negotiation of process that bonded mentor and apprentice in a spiritual manner.
See Patricia Montgomery’s Apprenticeship Blog to see the progression of her mentorship with Helen Anderson. For more information on Patricia Montgomery, visit http://dragonartplace.com.