Kleinman’s Dazzling Art Quilts

Sherry Kleinman’s sewing machine is so smart it could probably be programmed to cook dinner. In fact, her Viking Husqvarna offers a dizzying number of stitches, free motion and embroidery options. As soon as the Pacific Palisades resident took the plunge and bought this amazing machine’to fill the void left by her last daughter’s departure for college in 2004’her artistic horizons exploded. When we think of quilts, we usually visualize bed quilts whose timeless patterns have been stitched in quilting circles across America from its founding days. Kleinman is drawn to art quilts, which resemble traditional quilts in assembly only (two pieces of fabric held together by stitching) but celebrate the artist’s creative imagination. Art quilts, which can be as riotous as a Pollock canvas or as realistic as a Stieglitz urbanscape, are enjoying an explosion in popularity as evidenced by the many entries in the nation’s top juried quilt exhibitions. Kleinman herself will be the featured quilter at the Santa Monica Quilt Guild’s Quilt Show on June 13-14 at Loyola Marymount University.   From the time she learned to sew in 7th grade while growing up in Cedar Falls, Iowa, Kleinman has kept her needle sharp, making costumes for her daughters Courtney, Stephanie and Brittany and undertaking numerous home decoration projects.   After she and her husband Steven moved to Pacific Palisades in 1974, Sherry was a fulltime homemaker until the girls were older, when she worked in Steve’s dental office in Westwood.   With her new sewing machine, Kleinman rekindled her love for fiber. ‘I started by making a traditional bed quilt,’ she says. ‘I had so much fun cutting out fabric pieces that what I had imagined to be a small coverlet grew and grew.’ In short order, however, she realized that she didn’t like following other people’s patterns. She took a class from award-winning fiber artist Terry Waldron, who encouraged her to treat cloth as she would canvas. ‘I immediately grew out of pieced work [fabric pieces are sewn together in sections] to experiment with free form and raw edge [just take fabric and cut it], and appliqu’ techniques,’ Kleinman says.   New ideas bombarded her senses, which she was able to fashion into quilts. ‘I began to love the experience of seeing what was possible,’ says Kleinman, who explored portraits as subjects that she painted with acrylics, textile paints or water-soluble colored pencils. She prowled thrift shops and fabric stores for material, or dyed her own. ‘Most quilters are fabric-aholics,’ she admits.   She joined the Santa Monica Quilt Guild, an organization of some 150 like-minded quilters who meet once a month for lectures, and she wouldn’t miss meeting with her mini group of six to 10 quilters who call themselves the Fiber Fanatics. ‘We get together to share ideas, discuss techniques; it’s great for mentoring one another,’ she says. Sure enough, in 2005, another woman in the group suggested that she enter juried shows.   Quilt shows, like quilt makers, have multiplied at craft fairs, regional festivals and dedicated exhibitions all across the country, and a number of them have become as prestigious as any of the fine-art biennials.   Last year Kleinman went to all the major competitions, including the ‘Artist as Quiltmaker’ in Oberlin, Ohio; the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, which draws some 50,000 for a weekend; and ‘Art Quilt Elements’ in Wayne, Pennsylvania, considered the premier art quilt festival on the East Coast.   ’I didn’t know what I was doing that first year, so I entered in both the Pennsylvania and Ohio shows’and was accepted,’ Kleinman admits. ‘There was no way I could be at both shows, so I accepted one and called the Ohio organizers to explain.’ This was a serious misstep, but not, as it turned out, a career breaker. The organizers accepted Kleinman’s naivet’, but withdrew the Judges Choice award she was to receive and gave her an honorable mention instead.   Kleinman’s dream is to be accepted into the Quilt National, held every two years in a converted barn in Athens, Ohio. ‘I’ve tried twice,’ she says, and will apply again this year. ‘I know of a person who applied seven times and was finally accepted. They gave her an award for her tenacity.’   In order to submit work to these various shows, Kleinman has to have the inventory. ‘A few years ago, David Limrite, director of the Brentwood Art Center, pushed me to develop a body of work,’ she says. ‘A body of work is defined by a unifying principle, such as portraits or using a similar technique. I decided I was going to blend my love of fiber art with my painting, which was really exciting to me.’   She often finds inspiration from photographs; such as the photo of the Marrakech spice market her daughter Stephanie shot, or the portraits that she paints from live models in her Brentwood Art Center classes, which she has continued for the past 18 years.   She usually has several projects going at the same time. ‘I need to stand back and look, especially when I’m not quite sure where I’m going. Then, often there is ‘light bulb’ moment.’   But it’s this seat-of-her-pants inspiration that Kleinman loves. ‘I do have a general plan for a piece, but what works best for me is not really knowing where I’ll end up.   ’I think my basic thing is that I don’t like to follow patterns. I often made my kids’ costumes without patterns. When my kids were born, I was a fulltime mom, and I remember that as soon as my husband would come home from work, I’d run out to the Crazy Ladies fabric store in Santa Monica, not necessarily to buy, often just to touch the fabrics.’   Kleinman is the featured artist at the Santa Monica Quilt Guild show on Saturday, June 13, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, June 14 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Burns Recreation Center, Loyola Marymount University in Westchester. Visitors should enter from Lincoln Blvd. Parking is free; admission is $7 at the door. Contact: www.santamonicaquiltguild.org.