The New Brunswick Museum and the Marco Polo Quilters Guild are proud to present the biennial juried New Brunswick Contemporary Quilt Award for 2019. This year, two quilts will share the award and be added to the permanent collection of the New Brunswick Museum.
New Brunswick Contemporary Quilt Award, a collaborative project between the New Brunswick Museum and the Marco Polo Quilters Guild, ensures that quilts made in New Brunswick after 1960 are represented in the New Brunswick Museum’s collection. In the past half century or so, there have been major changes in quilt-making tools, methods and designs. To tell the most complete story, the New Brunswick Museum’s quilt collection must include current examples of provincial quilts.
Selected by jury, the fifth biennial award is being presented to:
Lillian Clark of Saint John for her 2019 Pinwheels Galore and Christina Savoie of Point La Nim for her 2019 Statistically Speaking.
Lillian Clark’s quilt, Pinwheels Galore, was awarded First Prize in the Traditional Quilt Category earlier this year at the 25th Biennial Marco Polo Quilters Guild Quilt and Fibre Art Show. Based on a design that she had photographed in 2007 at a quilt fair in Burlington, Vermont, Clark’s hand-quilted masterpiece pays tribute to the traditions of her mother, Laura Blanche Knorr Watson (1909-1989), from whom she learned to hand-piece and hand-quilt. Through the careful selection of colour and placement of the simple pinwheel pattern blocks, Clark has achieved a complex and dramatic visual composition.
Lillian Clark
(Saint John, Saint John County)
Pinwheels Galore quilt, 2018-2019
machine-pieced and hand-quilted cotton with polyester batting
224 x 198 cm
Christina Savoie’s quilt, Statistically Speaking, was accepted into the 2019 Canadian Quilters’ Association National Juried Show held in Ottawa and it was awarded the Viewers’ Choice ribbon at the Where Friends Gather Quilt Guild exhibition held in Charlo in October. An outstanding example of Free Motion Quilting, Savoie’s quilt displays an expert combination of design and skill. Inspired by the media’s graphics showing trends and comparisons about climate change, the quilt encourages viewers to connect with aspects of the natural world, including subtle depictions of flora and fauna, which are ordinarily concealed by those quantitative and daunting statistics.
Christina Savoie
(Point La Nim, Restigouche County)
Statistically Speaking, January 2019
machine-pieced, hand-appliquéd and machine-quilted cotton with cotton batting
148.5 x 212 cm
The New Brunswick Museum houses an extremely important textile collection. Since the first donation of a quilt in 1927, the bedding component has grown to over 500 quilts and quilt tops making it one of the most extensive overviews of provincially-produced bedding in Canada. Dating from the late eighteenth century to 2016, the collection now provides one of the most important resources for the research and study of quilting materials, designs and techniques in the country.
The New Brunswick Contemporary Quilt Award was conceived by the late Kathy Coffin, a member of the Marco Polo Quilters Guild. She generously donated funds raised by the sales of her original appliqué pattern quilt block, Purple Violet, a beautiful design depicting our provincial flower, for the first award in 2011. The inaugural award went to Donna K. Young, of Fredericton for her 2004 wall quilt, Railways in a Northern Land. In 2013, Juanita Allain of Riverview received the award for her 2002-2006 quilt, When Compasses Collide, in 2015 Gail Fearon of New Line won with her 2011 Baltimore Bouquet, and in 2017, the Tidal Threads Quilt and Needlework Guild of Grand Manan won with their 2011, Setting Day.
For more information:
New Brunswick Museum
Caitlin Griffiths or Aristi Dsilva, Communications and Marketing,
506-654-7059 or 506-643-2358
info@nbm-mnb.ca