JUDY KIRPICH

Since the age of twelve I have used a sewing machine: to make clothes when my mother had me on a strict clothing allowance, to craft stuffed animals for my children, to create a huge wardrobe of Issey Miyake outfits which I could never afford, and in the last fifteen years, to sew my art.

As a young seamstress I always hated making quilts using a template. I got bored easily and gravitated to complex tailoring. Then, about thirteen years ago, I happened upon a catalogue of artist Nancy Crow’s astounding quilts. I immediately signed up for a class, and since that time I have been passionate about improvisational quilting.

I was not trained as an artist -  indeed, my degrees were in sociology and landscape architecture. Much to my parents’ chagrin, after finishing up a masters in landscape architecture I announced that I was dropping it and heading off (without training) to become a graphic designer. I founded and ran Grafik, an office of about 40 brand strategists and designers, for 37 years. My sewing passion was relegated to weekends or when my two children were asleep. I worked on top of a bureau in my bedroom until my son went off to college, and then I commandeered his bedroom. After I retired, I built a studio of my dreams located in Lewes, Delaware where I have a second home.

I use mostly hand dyed cotton and I love complex compositions and complicated piecing. I do not fuse, or use applique, or bias tape. Instead, I spend hours cutting circles and lines into my background fabric and machine sew the cloth together.  If one was to turn my quilt top over you would see a mass of complicated seams.  In a sense my process is akin to a game of Russian Roulette since one false cut can ruin weeks of work. The advantage of piecing is that I have shapes that run over and under each other; I  prefer the clean look of my piecing technique (to that of fusing or machine applique), even though  it takes a lot more time.  I seek gestural marks and wonky lines, and am not trying to craft perfect circles or lines.  Trying to create a spontaneous line in quilting demands tremendous precision and is never boring.

In 2014 while I was trying to source some Japanese indigo cotton for a series I was working on, I stumbled upon an unusual Chinese cotton that is made by dyeing the fabric indigo, dipping it in a mixture of oxblood or pig blood and peppers, and then coating one side with egg and beating this side with mallets. This results in a piece of fabric that is shiny on one side and matte on the reverse and it only comes in black or brown.

I have been fascinated with this fabric, but it took me about three years to figure out how to work with it. I normally work in a series, and it was not until I reached Indigo Composition No. 8 that I truly understood how to maximize the cloth’s potential. There were some difficulties I had to surmount. For one thing, the cotton only comes in rolls about thirteen to fourteen inches wide, and I normally work on large compositions that are at least 55” wide. I had to figure out ways to make my work look like I had not created sections that were obviously due to this small width. The fabric is also rather stiff and its rigidity  posed some difficulties quilting it on my Juki home sewing machine.  The fabric can be difficult to source at times.  On the plus side, this cotton does not fray and holds a pleat beautifully.

When I started out I soon realized that texture would be incredibly important:  I only had two colors and two finishes to work with. As I have grown comfortable with the fabric, I have started to screen print using acrylic paints to give myself a broader range of colors. I have also started distressing the fabric using a variety of abrasives.

To the casual observer my compositions look simplistic. In many ways the later pieces in this series are self-portraits of a sort. For 37 years I owned a design and branding agency. I was known as a very strong-willed, self-assured business owner in the DC design community. I am very much like this fabric:  strong, yet, like the fabric, for the careful observer there is a lot to discover.  Only upon closer inspection can you see the detail, complexity, and fragility of my emotional base. 

My large studio affords me the luxury of working on several pieces at any one time. I am normally working on one complicated piecing composition, one using my Chinese fabric and perhaps finishing the binding and hanging sleeves of a third. The ability to work on multiple pieces allows me to step back and consider what I am composing without worrying about a lack of design wall space. It is a far, far cry from working on the bureau of my bedroom for so many years.

I look at the work of many artists: Cy Twombly, Pierre Soulanges, Carlos Merida, Simon Gallery, Olga de Amaral, Louise Nevelson,  and Anna Torma to name a few. When I get stuck I spend an hour or so gazing at Pinterest. But, I rarely “hang out” in quilters’ haunts since I am determined to develop my own voice and prefer not to be influenced while I am starting a composition. I am not a “joiner”- after 37 years of meeting after meeting after meeting I enjoy my quiet time and privacy. But, I do feel it is important to financially support allied professional organizations, so I am a member of various textile, quilting, surface design and graphic design organizations.

Judykirpich.com