Heidi Parkes let good fortune choose her colours. When friends and fellow quilters began gifting her fabric and thread, she decided not to sort or plan the palette herself. Abundance Study no. 1, pieced from cotton muslin and whatever cloth and thread arrived, took its colours from whoever happened to be generous that month.
The quilt is the opening piece in Inviting Abundance, Parkes's exhibition of quilts and textile works at MOWA | DTN, inside Saint Kate, The Arts Hotel in Milwaukee, on view through November 29. The show presents quilting as a contemporary art form while holding onto its histories of domesticity, family, preservation and care.
Heidi Parkes, Meuse, Pandemic, Invisible, Sweetheart, 2020
For Parkes, that history is personal. She learned to quilt through her grandmother, who planned a collaborative quilt to mark her birth, and her practice keeps that inheritance alive while folding in new information from other quilting traditions and her own training across disciplines. Domestic textiles, family heirlooms and found fabric all find their way into her work, alongside cloth she has embroidered, stained or dyed herself. She rarely works from a plan, relying instead on intuition and improvisation to build each piece...
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Further Information:
Inviting Abundance, and exhibition of quilts by Heidi Parkes is on now at the MOWA (Museum of Wisconsin Art) | DTN in Milwaukee, open until 29 November.
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Image Credits:
Lead: Heidi Parkes, Abundance Study No. 1 (detail). Hand appliqué, hand quilted, 2025.
All further images as credited in captions.
1 comment
Thank you so much for highlighting my quilts and this exhibition! ❤️