Looking for cover

Fending off the cold is the focus of several area exhibit spaces this winter, with Blue Spiral, A-B Tech’s Holly Library, the Folk Art Center and the Haywood County Arts Council Gallery all warming their walls with fuzzy fibers, quilts and tapestries.

At Blue Spiral, Lisa Klakulak pays homage to the natural world and our relationship to it with her mixed-media work “Transplant,” in which a circle of fine wire supports a woolen life-sized head. The woman’s face is coffee colored, her eyes are bright blue, and she looks up toward the heavens. A young plant grows from a seed held in her open mouth.

If that’s difficult to picture, well, it would be hard to imagine a quilt style not included in the current show at Holly Library—including contemporary abstract patterns in blinding colors, like those in Lynne G. Harrill’s “Heat Wave” series; works made with decades-old patterns, such as Barbara Swinea’s “Amish Cake Stand”; mixed-media quilts; and quilts telling stories. There are painted, embroidered, appliquéd, pieced, hand-stitched, machine-stitched and dyed quilts. A number of collaborations are presented, some involving all members of Piecers, Talkers and Appliquers, a local group of award-winning quilters.

Linda Cantrell uses appliqué to create lighthearted narratives. “A Day at the Beach” is like a Red Grooms painting. Dozens of tiny figures swim, sunbathe, play volleyball and cross the street for hot dogs and ice cream. But it’s not as idealistic as it sounds: An airplane overhead streams a banner advertising a wet-T-shirt contest, with the sardonic political subtitle: “We Exploit Women Every Night.”

Another work, this one by Connie Brown, offers a stark contrast to Cantrell’s approach. Her quilt “Bravura” is extremely intricate, with deep-burgundy appliqués and swaths of forest green laid over a creamy white ground. The Celtic-inspired design is extraordinarily complex.

Feminist politics are again addressed in “The Truth About Cave Art.” Dort Lee remembers her ire when she was told in an art-history class that the graceful animals painted on the walls of caves were done by men. Her quilt gives us her version of that endeavor. An original pattern by Janice Maddox transforms colorful calico into “Cats With Bowties.” A few of the works use glittery elements to their detriment, but Judy Simmons pulls it off in her “Butterflies Are Free,” another of the exhibit’s original designs. Responding to a challenge to depict glass in fabric, Brown came up with her whimsical “Fiber on the Rocks,” a group of stemmed glasses bordered with bouncy ball fringe.

A huge, ambitious quilt by Georgia Bonesteel is called “Dutch Treat”; the piece is executed in the blue-and-white colors of Delft tiles. The top of the tulip-bordered quilt features patterned prints shaped into fans with appliqués of wooden shoes. There are windmill blades headed toward a vanishing point, a globe composed of 36 different fabrics and a big circle decorated with blue-and-white teacups.

Politics and pop culture provide subject matter for several artists in the Southern Yarns show at the Folk Art Center. Susan Iverson’s “The Guardian Twins” is ominous with its camouflaged figures. Connie Lippert gives a solemn reminder of Alabama’s racist past with her “Tuskegee.” And Tommye McClure Scanlin exhibits a number of works addressing the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam.

Near the end of the ramp leaving the Folk Art Center Gallery is a quilt by Pattiy Torno called “Do No Harm.” Pieced in black and pink, the colors change with such subtlety that the transition is invisible. The lines between fine art and craft continue to confound.

[Connie Bostic is an Asheville-based painter and writer.]