Spotlight: PAST PERFECT: Mixed Media Quilts
Artist Statement
I trespass in abandoned houses. I spy on the people who once lived inside, watching them through the telescope of time. I get to know their histories in fragments, in fiction, and in retrospect. Their ghostly voices speak to me from the ruins, telling me why they celebrated, how they loved, what brought them joy, what gave them pain, what they wore, what they ate, why they fled. Later in my studio, I digitally merge and manipulate the photographic evidence scavenged from these forgotten homes. I then break these images apart and print them piecemeal on recycled fabric: scraps from my late grandmother’s church quilting group, each with its own forgotten history. I stitch the pieces together to create compositional wholes before adding my own speculative story in acrylic paint. In the end, each piece is no longer image alone, but is image and object in quilt form.
Jeana Eve Klein earned her degrees from North Carolina State University and Arizona State University (MFA). Her work has been exhibited internationally, including recent solo and duo exhibitions at VisArts in Rockville, MD, Jasper Arts Center in Jasper, IN and the Hickory Museum of Art in Hickory, NC. Images of her work have appeared in American Craft and several volumes of Surface Design Journal. She is a 2014 recipient of the North Carolina Arts Council Craft Artist Fellowship. Klein lives and works in Boone, North Carolina, where she is Associate Professor of Fibers at Appalachian State University.
