Last month, I attended my first-ever Quilt National opening at The Dairy Barn Arts Center in Athens, Ohio. It was a whirlwind weekend full of gorgeous quilts, yummy food, and great conversations with friends new and old.

My quilt called “A Slice of Candy Apple” is one of 81 quilts in the show. The front and back of the quilt feature my own hand-dyed fabrics. I made it last summer with the specific intent to submit to Quilt National, which requires new work that has not been exhibited elsewhere. At the time, I thought the design might be a one-off, but I recently realized it’s a great launch pad for a new series that explores perception.

Opening weekend consisted of a number of events, including an award ceremony, artist dinner, and special artist-only gallery hours.

It’s the only time people are allowed to photograph the show, so this blog post full of pictures! I included several gallery views below, but be sure to check out the 2023 Quilt National catalog. The 108-page, hardcover book is available for purchase and features excellent photographs of each quilt.

[NOTE: I included captions with each photo, but unfortunately Squarespace doesn’t show them when viewed on a phone or tablet. Please view on a computer to see captions.]

Inviting Connection

Lately I’ve been pondering the idea that exhibitions serve as a means of connection—connection to viewers, connection to other artists, connection to a community. (I wrote more about that for Curated Quilts, which you can read in the Linear 2.0 issue.) It was a treat to connect with so many people at Quilt National!

The various activities provided lots of opportunities to get to know the other artists. I met several folks for the first time, and I got to deepen relationships with a few people I knew only online.

A number of quilts were purchased during opening weekend, some by private collectors. Others are headed to the International Quilt Museum as part of four sponsored purchase prizes. Those are Best of Show, Most Innovative Use of Material, Award of Excellence, and Emerging Artist. In 2018, the International Quilt Museum partnered with the Dairy Barn to create the Quilt National Collection, which already includes around 100 quilts. Photos of each quilt are available to view on the museum’s website.

The History of Quilt National

Quilt National celebrates its 45th anniversary this year. The biennial show was founded in the late 1970s by fiber artists Françoise Barnes, Nancy Crow, and Virginia Randles. They lived in Athens and created a venue to share works that didn’t have a place at the more traditional quilt shows being organized at the time.

Nancy’s son Nathaniel Stitzlein helped convert an old dairy barn from a space for cows into an art center. He told me manure was shoveled out of the space and sold as fertilizer to help raise money for the first Quilt National held in 1979.

“Although it was called an arts center, the interior of the building was still very much a barn,” says the Dairy Barn website. “The trenches were still in the concrete floors; the stanchions were still in place; there was nothing covering the windows; and even though the cows had been gone for a decade, there were flies everywhere.” It wasn’t until 1983 that the facility had indoor plumbing, according to the show archive. (That archive is PACKED with information and photographs, be sure to check it out!)

Looking Ahead

More than 670 submissions from 21 countries were received for Quilt National 2023. Eighty one quilts were selected by jurors Chiaki Dosho, Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi, and Irene Roderick. Of those, 38 were made by first-time exhibitors—including mine—but Dr. Mazloomi wanted there to be more. “Quilt National could use an infusion of ‘new blood’,” she wrote in her juror’s statement. “This year there was only one quilter under 35 years old who entered the competition.”

The Dairy Barn is working to attract new exhibitors. The art center was a vendor at QuiltCon 2022 in Phoenix, where Executive Director Leah Magyary encouraged the audience to submit work for this year’s exhibition. Also in 2022, the Dairy Barn formed a new committee “to advise on the program’s community engagement, diversity and inclusion, and future jury selection, among other initiatives.” I look forward to seeing the results of their labor in the coming years!