"Cloth Poems"
Art Quilts by Marilyn Henrion

"Unless Something Happens" 68" x 63.5" 1996 Machine pieced, hand appliqued,  hand quilted. Silk, cotton, linen, and metallic fabrics.	"Enigma Variation II" 57" x 53.5" 1997 Machine pieced, hand appliqued,  stuffed work, hand quilted. Hand painted, dyed and commercial  cotton and metallic fabric.

A graduate of Cooper Union and a life-long New-Yorker, Henrion has been making quilts since 1975 bringing to the craft a strong background in graphic design. After twenty years on the faculty of the Fashion Institute of Technology, she retired in 1989 to devote full time to quilt making activities.

Her award-winning quilts have been exhibited internationally and are included in museum, corporate and private collections. Articles about her work have appeared in the New York Times, the New Jersey Star Ledger, Art Quilt Magazine and many more. Henrion and her work were featured in a segment of the TV program Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt in May 1991.

Henrion is among 37 artists from ten states and more than a dozen disciplines, including visual and performing arts and literature, to receive a Collaborative Projects Grant from ArtsLink for 1995/1996. Partially finded by tbe National Endowment for the Arts, ArtsLink was created in 1992 to advocate artistic excellence and build individual and institutional relationships between arts communities and to support projects that benefit artists and audiences, both in the US and in Central and Easter Europe, the former Soviet Union and the Baltics.

Henrion's most recent solo exhibition was held at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC in 1996. She currently serves as vice president on the board of directors of Studio Art Quilt Associates, a national organization dedicated to promoting the quilt as an art form.

A love of fabric and color is present from my earliest childhood memories. Although I cannot pinopoint exactly when my interest in quilts began, my training in graphic design in college contributed to my appreciation of the quilt as an art form. Old quilts have always held a strong attraction to me - both in terms of their visual impact and also their historical importance as a form of creative expression among women. Of particular interest were the Amish quilts, with their use of minimal geometric elements and extraordinary color combinations to create powerful aesthetic statements.

When I started making quilts in 1975, my motivation was two-fold. One, to satisfy a hunger for a form of visual expression which had been bottled up for many years while juggling a full-time job and raising four children in a crowded New York apartment.

The other motivation, which I believe is shared by other quiltmakers, past and present, was the quest for a small measur eof immortality: to say I once existed when I am no longer here.

Poetry, which  I was drawn to even as a child, greatly influences my work. As in poetry, the metaphorical images are meant to resonate, being both themselves and something else that they suggest to the viewer. As personal statements, reflecting my thoughts and feelings, my work is an autobiographical legacy for my children and future generations of my family. Beyond that, I can see its value as an historical document providing insights into one woman's life in the last half of the twentieth century.

The following lines from a poem by T. S. Eliot, which I embroidered on the back of the very first quilt I made, conjure up much of what quiltmaking means to me:

"Here between the hither and farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind."

(T.S Eliot, Four Quartets [Burnt Norton])

These lines bring to mind two aspects of quiltmaking: both the mediative state of being suspended in time that accompanies the process of quiltmaking for me, and the bridge that the quilts themselves form between past, present and future.

My evolution as aquiltmaker has gone through three phases. Initially, I was quite content to be one in a long line of traditional quiltmakers, copying traditional designs which I admired. I learned much from these experiences and drew satifaction in following in the footsteps of my predecessors. I looked upon these quilts as legacies for my children and future generations... products of my own hands.

The second phase began when I realized that this legacy could be enriched by creating original designs, thus being not only a product of my hands but a reflection of my own aesthetic sensibilities as well. It also served to enhance the quiltmaking experience for me.

The third phase came shortly thereafter when I realized that the quilt could serve, not only as a product of my hands and eyes, but as a canvas for expressing my thoughts and feelings... could, in a sense, become an autobiography. This would enrich the legacy even further and become a completely fulfilling creative experience for me.

Although included in the "art quilt" genre, my work maintains the traditional craft of fine quiltmaking in its form: three layers, hand quilted together by the artist. Thus the quilt pays homage to the past while making statements about the present and offering a legacy for the future.