Over one hundred eighty art quilts have been traveling in SAQA’s 20th Anniversary Trunk Show for the past year. From this diverse and beautiful group, fifty-five quilts have been chosen to become part of the International Quilt Study Center’s permanent collection at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. IQSC will maintain the collection and make it available to researchers and students interested in fine art quilting and fiber art.
(image: Uncle Mike by Margaret Phillips)
Vou Best has been coordinating the traveling Trunk Show, which was separated into 3 collections in order to reach a wider audience. Members of SAQA-Connecticut were fortunate to have one of the Trunk Shows at our Regional meeting in Guilford in December 2009.
According to Best:
“During the past year, many people have viewed the Trunk Shows in venues across the United States and in several other countries. They have been shown at SAQA Regional meetings, to Quilt Guilds, in Gallery shows, at IQF receptions, and I’m sure to neighbors and friends wherever the trunks have visited. Everywhere they’ve traveled, they have received an overwhelmingly positive reaction”.
After the selected works have been transferred to the University of Nebraska, the remaining art quilts will continue to travel in two collections until January 2011. After that, they will either be returned to the artist or sold on SAQA’s website.
SAQA’s Vice President Sandra Sider selected the works for the IQSC collection.
“One of the best parts of the 2009 SAQA conference was the three hours spent in my hotel room, with the 20th Anniversary Trunk Show spread out over beds, tables, chairs and floor. What an explosion of creative energy!
My curatorial task was to select approximately fifty pieces that would be donated in 2010 as a SAQA collection to the International Quilt Study Center. This collection documents the various techniques, processes, materials and artistic styles in quilt art during the 21st century, and the SAQA Board envisions these quilts as research tools, far into the future”.
To all the SAQA artists who exhibited their work in the traveling Trunk Show and the fifty five who will be part of the IQSC permanent collection… Congratulations!!
