Meet the Quilt Divas

Lorraine Benjamin, of Willseyville, NY, has been creating with fiber for as long as she can remember. She began quilting in 1997, and immediately was intrigued with the design elements of the quilt. Her creative “roots” are firmly embedded in the traditional quilt, but she began to explore a more contemporary approach to her quilting in the year 2000. Her art has always been a tangible “out-pouring” of her spiritual journey. Each of her pieces is a physical memorial that chronicles her growth as a mortal being.

Carol Boyer, of Syracuse, NY, taught middle school for 32 years in central NY. She is an artist who has been working with fiber art for the past thirty years and likes to explore new avenues and challenge herself on a regular basis. The ideas for her challenges come from nature, magazines, fabric, textures, colors and even words themselves. She is forever picking up one thing and searching for the possibility of it becoming something else with her manipulations. Carol loves texture and adds all sorts of objects to the surface of her work. She enjoys working with fabric and although she ventures into bead-work and doll making, she finds that she always returns to the quilting surface for a venturesome and fulfilling means of artistic expression.

Elsie Dentes, of Ithaca, NY, works in the fascinating surroundings of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Earlier in her career Elsie worked in graphic design for Cornell and then moved to NYC where she worked at the American Folk Art Museum and freelanced in design and illustration for clients including Children's Television Workshop. Elsie is a maverick of quilt design and hand appliqué. She is a sought-after teacher, often found at quilting shops giving lessons and her patterns are for sale at the register. The secret to Elsie's inspiration is that each summer she gets to visit the Adirondacks and soak in nature at its best. Many of her quilts are born from this period of reflection.

Mary Diamond, of Interlaken, NY, claims her artistic talents were first nurtured by growing up on a dairy farm, exploring her surroundings. Her subjects and palette reflect her love affair with nature. She briefly resided in Kenya and the use of brightly patterned fabrics of East Africa often is seen in her quilt art. Since Mary's career has been in education, her fabric portraits reflect many observations of children. She has created a series of art quilts featuring her grandchildren, each child enjoying a favorite pastime such as ice skating, ball playing, dancing, and spending a day at the beach. Mary delights in including a bit of serendipity or whimsy in each piece. Some of her work has had the distinction of touring internationally.

Sally Dutko, of Ithaca, NY, is recently retired from the position of Director of Publications and Marketing at Cornell University. As an original member of the Quilt Divas, she helped guide the Divas in its formative stages into an independent, dynamic fiber arts group. Her artwork has been influenced by a background in fine arts and graphic design. She dyes and paints fabrics, combining textures, patterns, and mixed-media elements to create collages, art quilts, and soft sculptures. She has been filmed in her studio for the TV program, "Simply Quilts" and was featured in the online subscription program "The Quilt Show". Sally is a member of the Greater Ithaca Art Trail and participates in the annual Ithaca Artists Market with her colorful booth of fabric art. Go to: arttrail.com/artists/DUTKO.html

Alice Gant, of Trumansburg, NY, has had a career as an art teacher in the Trumansburg and then Alaskan school systems. She has come home to roost and make wonderful banners of birds and animals and fables from far and wide. Alice was first a printmaker and then her artistic endeavors focused on banner work. She often creates banners that are huge and usually not seen in their entirety nor fully appreciated by her until she sees them installed on large walls in schools or churches or public buildings. In order to create her curvilinear banners she has developed a way to get that effect and names it "neo-reverse appliqué". Her sewing machine is a 35-year old Singer. Alice is a participant in the Ithaca Art Trail and exhibits her smaller pieces for eager patrons.

Donna Faivre-Roberts, of Lansing, NY (with summers in Newfoundland), has studied and explored art all her life, earlier working in jewelry and landscape painting and now in figurative art. She recently switched from sculpting realistic figures to a more organic abstract style and has found that wood is her medium of choice, as it has a "voice of its own". Donna explores such elements as vines, pods, twigs, stones, and seashells, joining them together to meld the beauty of nature and the gracefulness of the human form. Donna also sculpts small personal components - a face, a hand - which adds an anthropomorphic element of surprise to her pieces as they tease the spirits of nature to peek out of her art.

Cindy Henry, of Candor, NY, is an art educator in the Union-Endicott HS and the art instructional leader of grades K-12. She has been teaching for 15 years, first in Ohio and for the last 8 years at her present position. Her HS students have won numerous awards, attesting to Cindy's skill and inspiration, and she herself has won the NYS Region 4 Art Educator of the Year Award. She is also the President of the NYS Art Teachers Association. Cindy's background in graphic design is apparent in the simplicity and strength of her designs.

Sandra Holland, of Cortland, NY, is a practicing physician.  Throughout her career, she has worked in private practice as well as in the emergency room. Sandi has always pursued a creative activity to balance her medical dedication and has found that diversion in pottery and watercolors before becoming an advocate of working with fabric. She created her first quilt in 2002 and fell in love with the visual and tactile character of the fiber. Each new project is used to explore different techniques and materials, although she frequently comes back to the texture and design that can be created with simple stitching. Her processes invariably involve much thought, sketching and testing of her ideas before committing them to the work in progress.

Joan Lockburner-Deuel, of Richford, NY, attained her degree in art from SUNY at Plattsburgh and now pursues her Masters of Art at Syracuse U. Joan has participated in the Ithaca Art Trail and has had a number of solo art exhibits in galleries of Corning, Binghamton and Ithaca. Her pieces, some three dimensional, demonstrate her urge to work "outside the box". Joan is engaged by intersecting layers and textures that build a space or form and she uses new materials, her hand-dyed and painted materials, as well as used clothing. Layers are sewn down, cut apart and sewn together again. She senses that by using various types of cloth the assembled piece sparks individual assumptions and memories. Combining these energies, Joan works them into something new yet familiar. The last part of her process is the functional stitching that holds everything together and adds the last layer of color and images which define separation and connections.

Oiseaux Sisters, of Moravia, NY & Gulfport, FL. Susan Andrews is half of the talented Oiseaux (French for bird) Sisters, so self-styled because they migrate seasonally, upstate New York in summer, and Florida in winter. Her work incorporates humor, movement and metaphor. Materials include mixed media use of paper, tin, clay, cloth, carved and painted wood and found objects. She has created a series of figurative, often biographical or mythological figures and cupboards which range from small to larger than life size as well as many other figurative pieces and books which tell stories.

Cheri Sheridan, of Cortland, NY, is an artist who loves to express her ideas in the medium of fabric. She uses a variety of manipulations such as dyeing, resists, printing and adding texture with embellishments. Cheri has been a fabric surface designer for over twenty years and a junior high school art teacher for the past twenty-four. Her interest in and use of pattern, design, and symbols often come about from research she and her students have done to prepare for the retelling of cultural myths to younger audiences in the form of plays. They designed costumes, masks, props, and sets representative of their historic context and character. Cheri, while retired from teaching public school, has moved on to teaching adults in fabric design and continues to inspire viewers with her richly designed quilts and art dolls. She tackles subjects that interest her, socially and politically, worldwide.

Sharon Bottle Souva, of Syracuse, NY has been sewing since she was nine and began quilt making in 1976, putting her work on walls instead of beds. This allows her a greater freedom in exploring ways to manipulate the fabric. Several years ago she discovered the joys of unfinished edges and loose threads. These have become an important part of her current work. She finds herself looking at nature and man-made structures with the question: "How could that be interpreted in fabric? How can I incorporate those elements of texture and design into my work?"

Kristin Thompson, of Ithaca, NY, is a self-taught knitter, sewer, quilter and lover of all things fiber. Kristin enjoys handwork the most, exploring the techniques of appliqué and embroidery. The embellishment of quilts with thread work and "all things beautiful and fun" is her passion. One can find Kristin on the sales staff of Quilters Corner in Ithaca, knowledgeably assisting others in their artistic pursuits. She describes herself as being on a fabric journey and although grounded in traditional quilts, Kristin actively pursues and creates contemporary, original designs.

Ruth A. White, of Varna, NY, has always dabbled in various artistic endeavors, though, for most of her adult life, science has been her profession, her passion, and her primary art. In 1999 she discovered the fascination of quilting and now Ruth enjoys working with the different textures of silks and cottons and delights in the serendipity of creating her own hand-dyed fabric. Various sciences such as astronomy, biology and archaeology infuse her art, while at the same time she explores revealing the different layers of a quilt. In 2009 and 2011 she led the development of and ran an entertaining and successful new competition, 'Project Iron Quilter', during the Tompkins County Quilters Guild Biennial Quilt Show.

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