Dena Crain
Spirit Works: Heart’s Aflutter, 2006
100% Cotton fabric, acrylic paint, metallic sequins 24" x 28"
Quilted on white cotton without prior design, then hand-painted, this Surrealistic piece documents the artist's congenital heart defect.
Dena Crain
Spirit Works: Diamond in the Rough, 2008
100% Cotton fabric, acrylic fabric paint, rhinestone 12" x 12"
Quilted on white cotton without prior design, then hand-painted, this Surrealistic piece documents a theft of the artist's jewelry.
Dena Crain
Designer Pinwheels: Calligraph, 2007
100% Silk fabrics, glass bead and mirror embellishment 12" x 12"
Fourfold rotation of a tessellated right triangle, executed in silk charmeuse and other hand-dyed silk materials, fools the eye as a seemingly impossible-to-execute design.
Dena Crain
Darned Quilts: Bubbles III, 2007
100% Cotton hand-dyed (not by the artist) fabrics 31" x 38"
Made from eight fat quarters of fabric, concentric rings pulled together an otherwise unmanageable composition.
Dena Crain
Crystal Quilts: All That Glitters, 2002
100% Silk Fabrics 26" x 22"
Small in size, rich in scope, this Crystal Quilt is reduced in scale without sacrificing detail: an abstract image that would grace any wall.
Dena Crain
Balancing Act: Snakes and Ladders, 2012
Cotton/polyester blend fabrics, cotton commercially printed fabrics, and cotton fabrics hand stenciled by the artist; conch shells 41" x 46"
Employing the cut, shift and sew techniques common to the Redefinitions Series, this piece features improved regularity in the patchwork coupled with the variable nature of African print fabrics. Cut-outs from the fabrics at left were appliquéd to the patchwork at right.
Dena Crain
Patchwork Without Piecing: All That Jazz, 2015
100% Cotton solid color and print fabrics, some printed by the artist; holographic ribbon 26" x 29"
Constructed entirely without prior piecing, All That Jazz grew of its own accord. Something mystical happens when we suspend all, or most, conscious thought about design, and simply allow the materials to dictate the resulting image. Such was the case with this piece, featured in the 2019 Kenya Arts Diary as the first patchwork quilt in Kenya to be considered a work of art.
Dena Crain
Balancing Act: Urban Africa, 2012
100% Cotton tie-dye fabric, commercially dyed solid color cotton fabrics, recycled glass beads from Kitengela Glass 34" x 38"
Free-hand cut and pieced background from one piece of African tie-dye fabric, plus a collection of solid colours interspersed with linear elements and strip-pieced sections, imparts a sense of architecture and the urban setting as experienced in Africa. This singular work cannot be replicated.
Dena Crain
Balancing Act: Desert Sands, 2013
100% Silk fabrics, hand painted by the artist and commercially dyed 30" x 34"
Capturing the colours and shadows of the desert, this piece plays with the direction of silk fabric grainlines to echo shifting sands.
Dena Crain
Balancing Act: Gee Whiz, 2012
Silk fabrics, acrylic fabric paint, decorative threads 40" x 41"
A cut, shift and sew procedure with pieced linear elements added to the patchwork makes this quilt lively and full of spontaneity, reminiscent of the work of Gee's Bend quilters. Made from 100% silk fabrics in solid colours and/or hand-printed by the artist with heat-set acrylic paints, there is nothing straight about this quilt; all lines wobble. Densely quilted with variegated thread. If G's Bend quilters get away with it, why can't I? Gee, whiz!
