Duck Creek Encourages the Community to Air Their Quilts, Just in Time for Spring

In the spirit of spring, The Arts Center at Duck Creek, in collaboration with artist Louise Eastman, will host the “Airing of the Quilts,” a community event on April 22 enabling participants to hang quilts from their own collections on the grounds of Duck Creek in East Hampton. The quilts that will be on view that day range from collaborative pieces made in recent months to quilts that have been in families for generations.

Each quilt will be hung on a clothesline and they come in all shapes and sizes. Among them will be a Community Quilt that was made especially for the event by over 30 local artists, each of whom designed a square.

In addition, The East Hampton Historical Farm Museum and The East Hampton Historical Society will both be displaying quilts from their collections, some of which are over 100 years old.

Eastman said she would encourage community members to bring other art forms, so long as they can fit on a clothesline.

“I have a friend who is a writer,” she said. “I said, ‘Just write something and put a piece of paper up.’ Who knows?”

Eastman is bringing her own quilt as well, she said. As a painter, her quilt has painted squares. A beginner, she has been taking quilting courses in Riverhead.

“I’ve been making quilts with the eye of a painter,” she explained. “They’re not functional quilts, but they follow all of the tradition.”

The Community Quilt, organized by artist Christine Sciulli, is made up of squares created by local artists and the aim is to show off individual artistic styles.

“You can identify some of [the squares] clearly from what [artists have] made and then other artists did things that maybe were a bit more unexpected,” said Jess Frost, Duck Creek’s executive director.

Stephanie Joyce, who made a square for the quilt, said she wanted to honor Mother Earth for Earth Day and celebrate “its wisdom and nurturing force.”

Some artists, such as Sydney Albertini, a fiber artist who designed Duck Creek’s logo, has been quilting her entire life. Elizabeth Duffy, who had an exhibition at Duck Creek in 2022, took inspiration from the inside of security envelopes at the bank, designing a fabric to replicate it and using it for a sea star quilt, Frost said.

“Her whole concept behind the security envelope was this idea of ‘what is security to you’” Frost said. “So you have a security blanket, you have things in your life that pacify and make you feel secure.”

Stephanie Joyce, along with her sister Liz Joyce, will be sharing a quilt made by their great-grandmother in 1860. It was restored by their grandmother, for their mother, and passed down to them.

The quilt has “different scraps of special occasions,” Stephanie Joyce said, including men’s ties, scraps of material from their mother’s prom dress, and scraps from places they visited around the world, like Egypt.

Joyce’s grandmother also replaced the pieces that were shredded, put a new back on, and stitched in all of the family members’ birthdays and important dates.

“It’s a work of art … I just felt like it needed to be on display. I thought it had lots of stories and a lot of love,” Joyce said. “You can feel the love in it.”

Albertini said she will be presenting a quilt made a decade ago. It’s inspired by the landscapes of the Northeast, complete with rocks and coral in the ocean. It’s completed with Japanese, German and French textiles, she said. Rather than using traditional squares, she used shapes and appliques for the quilt.

“I hand stitched on top of it to reinforce the shapes,” she said.

The East Hampton Historical Society will bring five quilts from its collection to display at “Airing of the Quilts.” The first consists of signatures from notable people — authors, musicians, actors and designers — who have lived on the East End, including: Dina Merrill, Sidney Lumet, Craig Claiborne, E.L. Doctorow, Shana Alexander, Peter Jennings, Peter Boyle, Billy Joel, Carlos Montoya, Eli Wallach, Halston, Pierre Franey, John MacWhinnie, Ralph Lauren, John Hammond, Bob Fosse, John Irving, Norman Dello Joio, Lauren Bacall, Alan Alda, Itzak Perlman, Cheryl Tiegs, James Kirkwood, Sally Quinn and Ben Bradley, Joseph Heller, Ann Jackson and Roy Lichtenstein.

The historical society will also display its “Yo-Yo” project, referred to as a quilt which incorporates fabrics from the 1930s through the 1970s, cut into circles and affixed to the design.

Finally, the collection will include a star quilt, a friendship quilt and a “crazy quilt” consisting of “flowers, birds, butterflies, fruit leaves, fans and symbols.”

Eastman and Frost met at an art show a decade ago, Frost said, and she noted that they frequently collaborate on ways in which to engage the community. During the pandemic, it was Eastman’s idea to have the “Bring Us a Bird Event,” in which community members designed birds to put in the trees at Duck Creek. That event, noted Frost was the impetus for the quilt show.

Similar to the bird event, the concept fits perfectly into Duck Creek’s mission of making art accessible, Frost said, allowing community members to show off their work without the stress and pretense of an art show.

For Frost, the challenge of the event is to strengthen enough clotheslines all over the property to accommodate the expected number of quilts.

The concept of bringing quilts out into the air and sunshine of spring is also a time-honored homesteading tradition. Quilts have long been handmade items of love used to warm beds and hearts and ward off the cold of the darkest nights. Spring is a chance to throw open the doors, hang the quilts and celebrate a new season.

Eastman said the tradition has been around for many years and in certain parts of the country, it becomes an event for the entire community, to air their quilts.

Frost said she hopes to make this an annual season-opening event, and like in other places, even encourage additional local museums and arts centers to air out their quilts, making it “more of a community event and not just a Duck Creek event.”

Artists contributing to the Community Quilt are: Almond Zigmund, Amy Wickersham, Andrea Cote, Barbara Dayton, Bastienne Schmidt, Candace Hill Montgomery, Christine Sciulli, Christina Sun, Claire Watson, Dora Aretaki, Erica-Lynn Huberty, Eva Faye, Francine Fleischer, Jackie Hoving, Jennifer Tripp, Jill Musnicki, Kerry Sharkey-Miller, Laurie Lambrecht, Linda K Alpern, Lindsay Morris, Louise Eastman, LoVid, Margaret Garrett, Mary Ellen Bartley, Pipi Deer, Roisin Bateman, Sabina Streeter, Sabra Moon Elliot, Saskia Friedrich, Stephanie Joyce and Tracy Loggia.

“Airing of the Quilts” will take place on Saturday, April 22, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a rain date of Sunday, April 23. At noon, JC Rico will perform his Earth Day Rap and a tour of the quilts will follow. Community members are invited to bring their own quilts to display and should arrive between 9 and 11 a.m. to help hang the quilts on clotheslines. All quilts must be tagged with the exhibitor’s name, phone number and email. Duck Creek will provide tags for those who don’t have them. If you chose to hang a valuable quilt it is requested you stay nearby.

For more information, visit duckcreekarts.org. The Arts Center at Duck Creek is at 127 Squaw Road in East Hampton.