One of the truly wonderful things about studying at the Crow Barn with Nancy Crow is the chance to spend five or more days surrounded by artists who love thread and fabric and creating with those objects as much as you do.

Many life long friendships are formed during those weeks of study. My friendship with Heather Pregger began exactly like that. We met at the Barn and over the years have continued to stay in contact even though she lives in Texas and I live in Alaska.

We are frequently roommates which means too much red wine and lots of late night conversations about things that are dear to us.

This month, Heather has a solo show at the Goodrich Gallery in Dallas Texas.

The opening was last weekend.

In the exhibition, Pregger presents a series of artworks that explore the tension or harmony that can be created by the play of color across a fabric surface.

Many of the pieces are inspired by microscopic slides of minerals.

According to Heather, “I was a geology major in college and I spent many happy hours in the mineralogy lab, poring over microscopic thin sections of rocks and minerals. The colors, the shapes and the flow of colors over the face of the slides was incredibly exciting. As part of the course requirements, we sketched the thin sections we examined. Armed with a small sketchbook and a large box of colored pencils, I spent day after day drawing and coloring these slides. My abstract quilts still reference those drawings.”

Others are comprised entirely of a repeated shape, which interlocks and dances across the surface of the piece. The resulting art quilts are abstract, geometric and very colorful.

Heather describes her work in this way, “I work in an abstract manner, experimenting with color, line, and shape in constructing geometric and free form compositions. My work is pieced and machine quilted, using both hand-dyed and commercial fabrics. Individual blocks are arranged and layered, the design developing with the changing interplay of colors and shapes. The emerging color/shape combinations constantly suggest new directions to pursue.”

Heather is a Fort Worth-based artist who has exhibited her art quilts in museums and galleries both nationally and internationally.  Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Oulu Museum of Art (Oulu, Finland), the Muskegon Museum of Art (Muskegon, MI), Visions Art Museum (San Diego, CA), the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center (Auburn, NY), the Carnegie Art Center (New Albany, IN), the Fort Worth Art Center (Fort Worth, TX) and the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio (Lancaster, Ohio).

She was awarded the Cathy Rasmussen Emerging Artist by the Studio Art Quilt Associates in 2014.

If you are interested in Heather’s work and would like to see more, you can visit her website and blog , or follow her on Facebook or Instagram.

If you are in Dallas, I hope you will visit the exhibition this month. It is at the Goodrich Gallery at the First United Methodist Church 1928 Ross Avenue Dallas, Texas.

It will be a good time filled with color and pattern!

17 Jun This entry was published on June 17, 2017 at 2:30 PM. It’s filed under Art in Place, News And Events and tagged Art in Place, Heather Pregger, Quilt Art. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.