Artist Statement

Vickie Wheatley

Vickie Wheatley is a contemporary quilt maker in Louisville, Kentucky whose works capture the feelings of vibrancy, energy, and anxiety that swirl around and within us as we experience change in our lives. Since 2017, she has been using the techniques of strip piecing, slicing, and restructuring to embody a response to her feelings about the effects of change on our personal lives, society, and memory.

Vickie’s roots are in the mountains of east Tennessee where generations of women created quilts of beauty and utility from what they had at hand. The process of quilt-making demands attention to detail and a willingness to slow down, observe and design, in order to create a work of art made of pieces of fabric that delight the eye and evoke an emotional response. The work consists of dyeing or finding the fabric, cutting the shapes and then arranging them on a large design wall, constructing the quilt on a sewing machine, adding the tiny fragments of surface embellishments, then adding a quilt back and a batting between the two layers, and sewing (or quilting) the layers together with thousands of yards of threads. This is a process that takes months for larger quilts. The work requires the hand, the eye, the mind, and the heart of the maker.

Vickie’s work has been shown extensively in Kentucky, including at the Yeiser Art Center in Paducah, the Owensboro Museum of Fine art, the Kentucky Artisan Center of Berea, Kore Gallery and Pyro Gallery in Louisville. Her quilts have been juried into a variety of quilt exhibitions, including Form Not Function in Indiana, Fantastic Fibers in Kentucky, and Quilts=Art=Quilts in New York. She is a member of LAFTA (Louisville Area Fiber and Textile Artists) and a Juried Artist Member of SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates).