Summer display for 'Winter's' quilts

by Peg McCarthy, Northumberland News
Art born of necessity is on display at the Art Gallery of Northumberland, in Victoria Hall.
Quilter Dorothy Winter has created new works for her current show in the Paul Kane Gallery, with one quilt in the main gallery that complements sculptural work by Frances Gage.
What was once a cheap source of bedding, quilts have evolved into an art form, said Ms. Winter, one which she calls "an original recycling success of pioneering" that re-uses scraps of material to create blankets and covers. A single quilt can take three months.
Never an artist or a sewer, said Ms. Winter, she worked at covering beds, then walls, in her eastern Ontario farmhouse in the 1970's.
"I became lost in admiration with the designs and colours of these little pieces," she said, adding quilters have never had sufficient appreciation of their stitched art.
Ms. Winter has always kept the stitching simple, but that said, her designs are intricate and each quilt has its own story to tell. Working entirely on her own, by choice, Ms. Winter has let the fabric lead her, and she's inspired by the material and the Ontario countryside.
"I greatly admire other people's work, but I try not to be influenced. I want something entirely from me."
And as fabric stores quietly disappear, Ms. Winter buys what catches her interest, and then lets the design flow from the bits and pieces, and hopes there is still enough available material to complete the quilt. Sometimes she's inspired by the everyday.
"My husband's ties constantly fell from the rack to the floor," she smiled, as she recalled asking men for their unused ties. "Before long, I had hundreds and I felt obliged to do something with them.
"A tie is a statement about a man - like the facts of a personality."
Sorted into colour and type of fabric, designs took form. In one quilt, they form a kind of colour wheel.
"There is so much symbolism in art - the circle is perfect, the square further away."
She works with opposing elements and sets them in a way to express balance, "in nature, in ourselves, the different aspects and pulls in our own nature - what we do to achieve tranquility."
It's serious work, but she admitted the "fudge factor is big". Trial and error, and her experience all have a part in each quilt. When one is completed, "it's at the stage where there's nothing I would change. When it just looks right and when anyone could look at it and feel they could do that," needle and thread are put down.
Dorothy Winter: Recent Quilts runs in the Paul Kane Gallery until Aug. 29. An opening reception is Saturday, Aug. 22, from 2 to 4 p.m. For more information, call 905-372-0333