{"id":3184,"date":"2023-04-17T14:57:21","date_gmt":"2023-04-17T18:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.montgomerymag.com\/?p=3184"},"modified":"2023-04-17T14:57:21","modified_gmt":"2023-04-17T18:57:21","slug":"contemporary-quilter-karen-schulz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montgomerymag.com\/contemporary-quilter-karen-schulz\/","title":{"rendered":"Contemporary Quilter Karen Schulz"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Schulz spends her days handling fabric, dyeing it, cutting and shaping it, piecing it together into stunning abstract designs. Photo by Bruce Campbell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like so many kids, as a toddler Karen Schulz had a blanket that went everywhere she did.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can still remember running my fingers along the satin binding of the blanket,\u201d she says. Once, she thinks, it was white, but she remembers it as a dingy greige color.<\/p>\n

At 5, on entering first grade, she still needed that transitional comfort object. \u201cBut my parents were really smart about it,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThey cut away one four-inch square of my blanket at a time. So it was a gradual separation. Then one day, I just left the last square behind somewhere, and that was that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or maybe it wasn\u2019t. As a professional contemporary art quilter, Schulz spends her days handling fabric, dyeing it, cutting and shaping it, piecing it together into stunning abstract designs. She uses cloth and thread \u2014 and now paper and paint \u2014 the way a trained abstract expressionist painter does, considering line, shape, color, weight and texture.<\/p>\n

Locally, she has shown her work at Glen Echo Park, Black Rock Center for the Arts, Waverly Street Gallery, the Ratner Museum and Strathmore Mansion. And she takes commissions.<\/p>\n

The Silver Spring resident learned to sew from her grandmother on a treadle sewing machine. \u201cShe was a very accomplished seamstress and made beautiful clothing. She always made her own patterns,\u201d Schulz says, \u201cand she loved making fancy dresses for her granddaughters. These dresses always came surrounded by an air of drama: We had to be blindfolded for the fittings because she didn\u2019t want us to see the dress before it was in its final state.\u201d That lesson stayed with Schulz: \u201cDon\u2019t show a quilt until it\u2019s finished.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A Certain Freedom, 34×27 inches, 2022, fiber. Photo by QuickSilver Photographers\/Mark Gulezian;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While she went on to sew many of her clothes in college, Schulz made her first quilt as a gift for her younger sister. \u201cI took myself to the Woolworths down the street and bought a book on how to make a quilt. I made so many mistakes on that thing, but I hand-quilted it on a homemade frame that at the time took up the entire living room where I was living. We had to crawl on our hands and knees underneath the frame to get to the other side of the room!\u201d<\/p>\n

But Schulz was hooked. Quilting became a refuge during her career as a clinical social worker for children, adolescents and families.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuilting was for my own pleasure and for family,\u201d she says, \u201cuntil I started making them for the wall.\u201d<\/p>\n

As her quilts grew in size, she made discoveries at various workshops, classes and quilters meetings that set her on course to study seriously with contemporary fabric artists and experiment with new techniques.<\/p>\n

From master quilt maker and teacher Nancy Crow, Schulz learned that contemporary quilting \u201cis grounded in composition. That undergirds everything that you do from the very beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

This understanding inspired her to investigate color theory, line, design and structure \u2014 values that painters use in their work. \u201cIt\u2019s all about compositional discovery,\u201d she says. \u201cI had never taken an art course in my life. I was 53 and decided \u2026 making quilts is very time consuming. If I\u2019m going do this, I want them to be the best I\u2019m capable of. I want them to be the most beautiful, the most interesting and I was willing to put in the work because I love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Objects in This Mirror, 67 x 70 inches, 2018, fiber
Photo by QuickSilver Photographers\/Mark Gulezian;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That has led to what Schulz calls a wet studio in her basement, where she custom dyes her fabrics, usually a dense cotton, to get the theexact colors and shadings she desires for each project or commission. \u201cI want my cloth to reflect me as an artist,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Upstairs, her sewing studio contains a Bernina sewing machine with a larger throat plate designed for quilting, though she doesn\u2019t use a long-arm machine because of the expense and space it requires. \u201cI do all my own quilting, always have. In my upstairs studio I design, cut, sew.\u201d<\/p>\n

In recent years she said she has become frustrated with the limits of sewn quilts when it comes to complex images, since she uses solid-colored pieces. \u201cWhen you sew a line, you can only get so complex,\u201d she explains. \u201cIf I\u2019m trying to get a really expressive line, you\u2019re limited. It\u2019s not like a pencil or a paint [brush].\u201d<\/p>\n

Schulz has become known for her creative use of line in her work, which she credits to a specific stitch. \u201cI do a lot of what\u2019s called couching. It\u2019s sewing \u2026 yarn or a thicker thread on top with a zigzag stitch.\u201d<\/p>\n

That technique is difficult, and Schulz still finds certain things she can\u2019t do with single lines and couching. \u201cThat propelled me into [exploring] mixed media on paper to investigate line quality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her most recent works express her painterly eye in acrylic and mixed media pieces on paper. These pieces lend themselves to deeper investigations in color, shape, texture and line.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on her evolution as an artist from her childhood love of a cuddly blanket to sewing lessons with her grandmother, to a decades-long practice as a psychotherapist with quilting as a hobby, Schulz says, \u201cIs it therapeutic for me to create art? Well, absolutely. But that\u2019s not the reason I do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is a self-created artist.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t make art to put in my closet or just for my own benefit or to feel better,\u201d she insists. \u201cI want what I make to be seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

For information on Karen Schulz\u2019s quilts and mixed media on paper, visit karen-schulz.com<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like so many kids, as a toddler Karen Schulz had a blanket that went everywhere she did. \u201cI can still remember running my fingers along the satin binding of the blanket,\u201d she says. Once, she thinks, it was white, but she remembers it as a dingy greige color. At 5, on entering first grade, she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":3187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,61],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nContemporary Quilter Karen Schulz - Montgomery Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.montgomerymag.com\/contemporary-quilter-karen-schulz\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Contemporary Quilter Karen Schulz - Montgomery Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Like so many kids, as a toddler Karen Schulz had a blanket that went everywhere she did. \u201cI can still remember running my fingers along the satin binding of the blanket,\u201d she says. 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