Today we’d like to introduce you to Annette Kennedy.
Hi Annette, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up in the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio. My father was a teacher, and my mother worked in an office. My mother’s parents were farmers in Indiana, 100 miles away, and we spent much time there as kids on weekends and in the summers. We were a “hands-on” family, with everyone enjoying working with their hands to create useful or decorative items. The men of the family did a lot of woodworking and building things. Between my grandmother and my mother, my sister and I learned how to sew, crochet, knit, garden, and cook. We sewed our clothes for years until it got more expensive than buying readymade clothes, and life got busier with other pursuits. The value and pride of creating with our hands were instilled in us from a young age.
Our family did a lot of camping in the summers. I enjoyed being out in nature and the fresh air, exploring the woods, swimming, and having evening campfires. I had my own houseplants and vegetable garden as a teenager. That love of growing things and being outdoors has remained with me. I also enjoy photography, especially since we have lived in some interesting places as my husband and I moved around, after marriage, with his military career. Living in Colorado for 19 years after my husband retired from the military satisfied my soul by hiking in the mountains and photographing the beautiful, majestic scenery. My grandmother had quilted in her younger days but gave it up after 7 quilts she and her mother had made for her trousseau were destroyed in a house fire. She took it up again when I was a teenager, which interested me in quilting. My first quilt was a crib-sized Grandmother’s Flower Garden pattern, sewn and quilted all by hand. After that, I didn’t make any more until the early 1980s when my son was a toddler, and my mother got into quilting, doing it all by hand. With her guidance, I started an afghan-sized quilt. I did sew the top together by machine, but the quilting was “supposed” to be done by hand back then, and it didn’t take me long to decide it was more time-consuming than I could handle, so my mother finished it for me. A few years later, mom started quilting by machine, which renewed my interest.
I made a few small patchwork quilts while my son was growing up. With our moving around, I only saw my mother occasionally to get tips and instructions from her. She is a very precise quilter, making sure all the points and seams match, and she passed that desire for accuracy and attention to detail onto me.
In 2002, shortly after my husband retired from the military, we moved to Colorado. The following summer, I went to my first quilt show with my mother and sister in Sisters, Oregon. It was a great initiation into what quilts could be, and I could hardly wait to get home into my sewing room. From that point on, I was committed to art quilting! Art quilting allowed me to work out and express my inspirations from the mountain vistas and Aspen trees of Colorado or anything else that spoke to me. Within a few years, I had become a professional quilter, teacher, and lecturer, and I haven’t looked back!
You wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been fairly smooth?
My biggest challenge is managing the business aspect of being an artist with the creative side. My work appeals to locals and tourists alike, so if you are a local shop or gallery owner reading this, I would love to talk with you! I’m most interested in getting my art into the local community and my smaller reproduction items (notecards, magnets, coasters, trivets, and prints) into local shops.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a textile artist working in the mediums of Art Quilting and Silk Fusion. The quilts are made with fabrics, which I then paint on to increase the visual depth and add details. Then I add the center and backing layers and stitch them on a sewing machine to hold them together and give the artwork texture. I think of my art quilts as a cross between a quilt and a painting. Most of my works are representational landscapes.
My quilts are a labor of love. I am detail-oriented, so I put a lot of detail into my work, which is very time-consuming. In my quilt “Mountain Chapel,” each stone on the chapel is a different fabric. Very few of the fabrics are repeated. It took me around 500 hours to complete that quilt. Still, it won the Best Wall Quilt Purchase Award at the 2009 American Quilter’s Society Show in Paducah, KY, increasing my opportunities to teach nationwide. It represents a pivotal point in my career. It is in the permanent collection of the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY. I’ve won many local and national awards; many of my quilts are in private collections nationwide. My works have been featured in magazines, books, and newspapers.
As an adult, I worked as a dental lab technician, a cosmetologist, and a retail merchandiser for Hallmark Cards, until I became a full-time artist, Art Quilting Teacher, and Lecturer in 2006. I’ve enjoyed moving around during my husband’s military career, exploring new places with their natural beauty and varying types of landscapes and plant life. We’ve lived by oceans several times and in colorful, tropical Puerto Rico for 4 years. Two years ago, after 19 years in Colorado, we moved to the Austin, Texas, area near our two young grandsons. Although I miss the beauty of the mountains and the Aspen trees in Colorado, I am exploring the beautiful landscapes, sunrises, sunsets, and flora in Texas that have become my current inspiration for my art. Making landscape art of the beautiful things around me helps me integrate with my surroundings and share that experience with others. For me, creating and sharing beauty with others is a calling and a purpose. My Silk Fusion landscape art is a more recent fiber pursuit and is created with fluffy silk roving lain in 3 layers, perpendicular to each other, to create a strong substrate. Silk threads and ribbons are included as well. The fluffy fibers are wetted and flattened with an acrylic medium to create what would be like thick handmade paper. Next, I paint it to add shading and details, again looking to increase the visual depth. These pieces are small, usually less than 9×12”. I enjoy making these between the quilts as they are a nice reprieve from the many hours it takes to complete an art quilt.
I currently have 3 original art quilts hanging in the “Art Quilt Expressions” show at Inspired Minds Art Gallery at 121 Main Street in Buda, TX. The show runs now through May 27, 2023. Gallery hours are Mon-Fri 1-6 and Saturday 12-5. I have my reproduction items at the San Marcos Art Center in San Marcos, 2 Moons Art Loft in Dripping Springs, and the Old Bakery & Emporium on Congress in Austin. My silk fusion pieces sell quickly out of these same locations.
What makes you happy?
We all go through times when we need to get our heads out of an undesirable place and into a calming, healing, restorative, redirecting, and inspirational space. Spending time in nature and creating is therapeutic for me. Viewing beautiful art or seeing or doing something that touches and speaks to you positively is also healing. Not everyone creates, but we each find things that lift us up and make us better. When I’m not quilting, I like to garden, hike with my camera, bicycle, and walk. Every once in a while, I’ll do a little watercolor painting. It’s great for trips when I want to take a project along.
Pricing:
- Small reproductions: $4 to $85
- Original Art Quilts: $900 to $12,000
- Silk Fusion: $99 to $500
Contact Info:
- Website: https://annettekennedy.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annette_kennedy_art/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnnetteKennedyART/
Image Credits
Quilt photos by: Scott Clair Silk Fusion
