Carnegie Arts Center, Turlock, CA

Yvonne Porcella: A Retrospective

On view through March 14, 2012

The Carnegie Arts Center is dedicated to recognizing excellence in regional artists through its Distinguished Artist program, an annual event that includes an award and retrospective exhibition for the honoree. "We are extremely proud to honor Yvonne Porcella in this first year," says Rebecca Phillips Abbott, Executive Director and Curator, "She is a remarkable textile artist whose works today are in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, the de Young Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Art & Design in New York, NY, the Phoenix Art Museum, and numerous others." The Carnegie's retrospective exhibit will trace Porcella's career from her earliest works up to and including the present. "In the process," says Abbott, "we are all given the opportunity to celebrate and honor a life's work."

Porcella's gift for artistic expression began in the 1960s with observations that the same fabrics were used again and again in the garments people were wearing. She began spinning her own thread, weaving her own fabrics, and making her own garments, and was soon involved in the Conference of Northern California Handweavers. In these early years, Porcella was influenced by ethnic clothing, primarily from Guatemala and by pieced and embroidered textiles from Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. In 1972 she had her first exhibition of weavings and wearable art. In 1977 she published Five Ethnic Patterns, followed by an ethnic pattern book Plus Five then Pieced Clothing in 1980 and by Pieced Clothing Variations in 1981. More publications would follow, including Yvonne Porcella: Art & Inspirations, published in 1998.

Her shift from weaving to quiltmaking began when she started to make garments out of patchwork. In 1979 she attended the West Coast Quilter's Conference and by the following year she had completely stopped weaving. It was a pivotal moment, so much so that she can tell you the date and time she last wove: 28 April 1980 at 8:30 in the morning! By 1981, she had created "Takoage," her first art quilt which was later acquired by the Smithsonian Institution for its Renwick Gallery, located across the street from the White House in Washington, DC. It was a promising start for Porcella who rapidly emerged as a visionary force artistically and in the art quilt movement as a whole. As founder of the Studio Art Quilts Association and President of the Board of Directors, she worked tirelessly in those early years to establish art quilting as an artistic genre in its own right.

Yvonne Porcella's art quilts are known for their bold originality as well as for their elaborate and delightful narratives which invariably treat the experiences of everyday life with a great deal of energy, substance, and humor. Versatility and artistic brilliance often go hand in hand, but seldom as exuberantly as this. Yvonne Porcella: A Retrospective is a celebration of Porcella's artistic achievements to date. We can now eagerly await the new adventures she has in store for us.