Americana Quilts: Reinterpretation of Tradition
Solo exhibition at Laundromat Art Space, curated by Dainy Tapia of ArtSeen365
May 14 - June 11, 2022
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Early in March of 2020, Regina Durante Jestrow was traveling through Arizona and New Mexico when airports began shutting down, and the world as we knew it began to change. As she made her way back to her studio in Florida, the colors of the southwestern landscapes imprinted onto her artist’s consciousness, creating “a pattern of skin tones… log cabins…windmills…” in other words - America. Back at home, in lockdown, Regina’s artistic practice turned to sewing colorful masks. But over the summer, as the pandemic heated up, and our country became transfixed by horrific images of a man murdered by the police in Minneapolis, this fascination with skin tones and landscape patterns morphed into an artist’s activism. The result of her reflection in these times is Americana Quilts: Reinterpretation of Tradition, a project that draws upon a traditional American medium – the quilt – to create a layered patchwork of artworks of potent meaning and metaphor reflecting the diversity and complexities of contemporary American Society.
Made by appliqueing clothing and fabric scraps onto muslin backings, these works are not traditional quilts intended to be used as bedding. They are, instead, standalone works of art that employ color, pattern, and irregular edges – even when stretched like paintings, to tell stories of our nation in its current state. “The quilt construction reflects a sense of home and nostalgia,” Regina explains, “but the irregular sides make sure one sees them as artwork.”
The content comes from the color palette and dying methods employed, including standard commercial textiles, natural colorants from rusty nails, onion skins, tea leaves, various plants, wrapping fabric around a rusty pole, or using Japanese-style Shibori tie-dying.
Similarly, Regina’s patterns erupt from their traditional soothing decorative roles into chaotic, undulating, cascades that make it clear that we are being challenged to think beyond the traditional. Here windmills patterns reference the Texas landscape with its vast array of giant turbines and devastating 2021 power outage. Log cabins (an arrangement of concentric squares) speaks to the comfort of home, with the red at its center as the heart that is held there. Then there is the power of a piece like Americana Quit #53, which begins at the top as a standard zigzag that unravels as it travels down the work. The blank spaces left by this deconstruction center make the work feel “as if the quilt is falling out, falling apart,” as the artist explains. The effect is one of trompe l’oeil three dimensionality. But within this visual trick, we also can identify the state of our nation. Things appear to be falling apart. But at the bottom, the zigzag unifies again – a flush of possibility. We can’t help but feel a little hopeful that our disintegrating world might yet knit together on the other end.
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Laundromat Art Space
185 NE 59th Street Miami, FL 33137
Curated by Dainy Tapia of ArtSeen365
May 14th - Exhibition opening, 6 pm - 9 pm
May 21st - Artist Open, 11am - 6pm
June 9th - Conversations with the Curator Dainy Tapia
June 11th - closing
Open by appointment Monday thru Sunday throughout the exhibition. Please contact me.
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The Laundromat Art Space solo exhibition Americana Quilts: Reinterpretation of Tradition celebrates the award-winning series Americana Quilts – Regina Jestrow’s ongoing exploration of stretching and challenging quilt forms and structures while considering the activist values that shaped historic quilt-making traditions. Curated by Dainy Tapia.
The Americana Quilt series began in 2020 as a response to the Black Lives Matter protests, while the Covid-19 pandemic spread. Jestrow investigated the role of American women in the Civil Rights, Anti-Slavery, and Suffrage movements, and discovered that quilts were tools that furthered these causes through storytelling, education, record-keeping, fundraising, and display as protest banners. Quilts have become record-keeping documents, incorporating cultural influences and changes in time.
Inspired by quilt piecework popularized by the resourceful, self-sufficient women of the Civil War era, Jestrow manipulates historical quilt patterns and structure, creating free-flowing movement with their geometry. She pushes and pulls these angular configurations and sews them with raw edges exposed, accentuating the fact they are unique handmade pieces. The reddish rust-colored thread is stitched jaggedly throughout, paying homage to the popular red-work quilts of the mid-19th Century that political-minded women created.
Considering the storied traditions of quilters, Jestrow draws together narrative threads by using second-hand clothing combined with new fabrics. Textiles include corduroy, men's shirting, muslin, and smooth cotton. She pairs these materials with fabrics she dyes using natural pigments that are developed from ingredients around her home studio. She combines rust from oxidizing nuts, bolts, and screws that were saved from an old family barn and adds plant materials from her kitchen and garden to create a range of lightfast colors. These materials and processes symbolize family, labor, decay, and rebirth.
The colors of the Americana Quilts are of varied flesh tones representing the American population and our combined histories. Alongside the skin tones lie the colors and textures of the American landscape. Each quilt incorporates a mix of iconic cultural traditions. Some of the geometric patterns originate from Native American weavings, Amish quilts, and African American narrative quilts. Various textures evolve from traditional Shibori and tie-dyeing techniques. Most recently, the series explores dimensions in both breadth and volume with overstuffed curves and pillowy channels.
The visitor’s journey through the exhibit provides a sense of Jestrow’s process, and viewers catch hints of relationships between larger artworks and the smaller versions that originally served as their models. The full body of work in the series includes works on paper, sewn stretched canvases read as paintings and organic free-form artworks that have custom hanging support.
The Americana Quilts series has received notable recognition from both institutional and private collectors, In 2021, It received generous support from Oolite Arts in the form of The Ellies Creators Grant. In 2022 she was a recipient of the MIA Stipend Program Grant from Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council. Jestrow had been earnest about creating larger works, so she invested these grants in a long-arm sewing machine to make more sizeable artworks for the growing series. Some of these larger artworks will be part of this and upcoming exhibitions.
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Dainy Tapia is a cultural practitioner based in Miami, FL. She is the creator and curator of ArtSeen365: a platform dedicated to promoting the visual arts in Miami, South Florida, and beyond by creating and publishing original digital content. Ms, Tapia collaborates with several art institutions in South Florida, including the Doral Contemporary Art Museum, the Bass Museum of Art, and the Women Artists Archive Miami (WAAM). She has an independent curatorial art practice and collaborates with artists to support their practices and projects.
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The Americana Quilts Series is funded by The Ellies, Miami’s visual arts awards, presented by Oolite Arts.
With the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners
Special thanks to: Dainy Tapia / @Art.Seen.365, Kerry Phillips, Rosa Lowinger, and Ronald Sanchez of Laundromat Art Space.
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“AMERICANA QUILTS: REINTERPRETATION OF TRADITION” – THE EXPLORATION OF STRETCHING AND CHALLENGING QUILT FORMS AND STRUCTURES WHILE CONSIDERING THE VALUE OF RITUALS.
Regina Durante Jestrow’s solo exhibition “Americana Quilts: Reinterpretation of Tradition” at Laundromat Art Space, opening May 14th, curated by Dainy Tapia, celebrates Jestrow’s textile-based artworks from her Americana Quilt series. Opening reception will be May 14th from 6pm to 9pm. Laundromat Art Space is located at 185 NE 59th Street Miami, FL 33137.
The “Americana Quilt” series began in 2020 as a response to the Black Lives Matter protests as the Covid-19 pandemic spread. While investigating the role of American women in Civil Rights, Anti-Slavery, and Suffrage movements, Jestrow discovered quilts were used to further these causes as a means of storytelling, education, record-keeping, fundraising, and display as protest banners. Quilts have become record-keeping documents incorporating cultural influences and changes in time.
Considering the traditions of quilters, Jestrow utilizes scraps from clothing, combined with new fabrics. Textiles include corduroy, men's shirting fabric, neopine, denim, and smooth cotton. Alongside these textiles, are fabrics Jestrow dyes with natural ingredients from around her home studio. She combines rust from oxidizing nuts, bolts, and screws saved from an old family barn, with plant materials from her kitchen and garden to create a range of lightfast colors. The resulting colors of the “Americana Quilts” reflect the varied flesh tones representative of the American population and our combined histories. Alongside the skin tones are the colors and textures of the American landscape. Various textures are created employing traditional Shibori and tie-dyeing techniques.
Jestrow reimagines and manipulates historical quilt patterns by applying improvisation, creating a free-flowing movement with their geometry. Each quilt incorporates a mix of different cultural traditions. Some of the geometric patterns originate from Native American weavings, Amish quilts, and African American narrative quilt traditions.
Originally from New York City, Regina Jestrow has been living and working in Miami for the last 20 years. Her art practice encompasses painting, drawing and installation, with an interest in women’s issues and the natural environment often being manifest in her work. In 2020 she created a large outdoor installation for the Spring Contemporary Exhibition at Deering State, as well as simultaneous installations at both locations of Oolite Arts Walgreens Windows in Miami Beach.
The presentation of this exhibition is due to the generous support of the Americana Quilt series by The Ellies, Miami’s visual arts award, presented by Oolite Arts, and the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners, through its Miami Individual Artists (MIA) Stipend Program.
Regina Durante Jestrow’s solo exhibition “Americana Quilts: Reinterpretation of Tradition” at Laundromat Art Space, will be on view May 14th – June 11th, 2021. Opening reception will be May 14th from 6pm to 9pm.
