Brilliance in the Mundane is an exhibition curated in partnership with Park Towne Place. It features five artists, Kevin Broad, Sean Irwin, Bruce Hoffman, Warren Muller, and Gerri Spilka, who celebrate the beauty inherent in the everyday.
Gerri Spilka is a Philadelphia-based textile artist who creates modernist paintings using fabric. Inspired by the medium of quilting, her work has a tactile feel to it that combines geometric boldness with the warm familiarity of textiles.
How does the history of quilting inform your work?
“I used to be more quilt block oriented in selecting ideas about what images to sew. However, today, my images are derived from a very evolved geometric and biomorphic personal and universal vocabulary. My imagery is driven by shape, color and technique of what I can sew, but mostly by what I want to communicate.
Quilting making history includes geometric pattern and abstract imagery, as well as figurative. I would say my work blends all.
My making techniques are largely driven by traditional quilting piece-making for the tops, and by traditional techniques of putting together the sandwich and then quilting them. But again, for quilting I use textures, not from tradition or history, but ones that reinforce my contemporary expressions.”
Do traditional quilting patterns influence your more modernist compositional tendencies, such as asymmetry and organic shapes?
“No they do not. But I still love them.”
Where do you source the fabric used in your pieces?
“I dye many in my 1950s Maytag wringer washer; I also buy them from many commercial sources. I have so much fabric, I probably never ever have to buy another piece.”
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