Interview with Nancy Cook

Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Nancy Cook. Nancy is in Charlotte, North Carolina and I am in Naperville, Illinois so we are doing this interview by telephone. Today's date is April 21, 2008 and it is 6:05 in the evening. Nancy thank you for doing this interview with me. Tell me about the quilt that you selected for this interview which is "Sourwood Festoons."

Nancy G Cook (NC): "Sourwood Festoons" is one of my favorite pieces. I have been doing a number of pieces around trees found primarily in the southeast. That interest relates back to a lifelong love of trees and going out into the woods with my mother. She would identify the different trees and particularly the trees that had edible nuts or fruits that we could eat. That was just a fun kind of thing and over the years I've continued that interest. So being able to do a quilt about something I have a passion about pulls a number of passions together at one time.

"Sourwood Festoons" is one of my very favorites because here in the southeast the Sourwood tree is an edge land tree in the foothills and the lower mountains that turns this wonderful, wonderful maroon color early in the fall. It is the first of the trees that gives really good color in the fall and then at each terminal branch, the end of each branch, it has a cascade of long finger like seed fronds that cascade down the tree. The seed fronds are beige gold and it is like the tree decorates itself for Christmas. The tree is just a marvelous combination of deep maroon with the beige gold seed fronds hanging in front of the maroon color.

I was working on some design exercises playing with layers of quilting in a class at Quilt Surface Design with Cherilyn Martin. We were doing a number of different things in the class and I came across a photograph that had a Sourwood tree in it and I thought 'I want to do something with that tree. I wonder what I could do.' I started thinking about the fall color and went down to the vendor's booth to Judy Robertson's hand dyed fabrics and found a piece of fabric that had the exact maroon-mahogany color in it. It was just this serendipitous experience of finding just the precise piece of fabric to use. Once home, I looked at the design of the seed fronds that cascade down and turn up on their ends and figured out a way to capture that. That fall I found a Sourwood tree in fruit and I took a sample of the seed fronds to see the details. I copied a small section of the photograph on the scanner in black and white and then cut chunks of the seed fronds and made an interesting arrangement of them. I took a design of the seed fronds and I drew them out until I discovered the rhythm that conveyed the sense I was looking for. I had the design blown up to full size and then traced it onto tracing paper.

Next I quilted that wonderful maroon-mahogany piece of fabric with a Sourwood leaf design. I used a heavy variegated thread that pretty much disappears from a distance. When you get closer to the quilt, you see the pattern of the leaves in the background. I did those by free motion, first practicing the leaves on another quilt sandwich until I could get the motion of quilting the leaves, doing the veins in the leaves and such.

Next I put the tracing paper on top of the quilted piece and pinned it down thoroughly. Sewing through the paper, I again used free motion quilting in different weights of beige threads to do the seed fronds cascading over of the leaves. Sourwood Festoons is a favorite because it really captured what I was trying to do. Like with any artist's works, we get an idea in our mind and often what we create is maybe not exactly what we were wanting, we didn't quite capture it. "Sourwood Festoons" is one of those that really captured what I was trying to say and the feeling and the tone that I had about the tree experience.

What I learned after I created "Sourwood," is that I had been doing a number of pieces that related to the fall, tree and leaf color. I came to my artwork in what can be considered the autumn of my life and that awareness was really very strong. The feeling was that I don't have much time, feeling almost frantic about trying to learn as much as I could and master as much as possible about my craft. Because of arthritis, declining vision or loss of physical stamina and strength, a number of people don't produce beyond a certain age. I wondered, 'Well I don't know how many more years I've got out there.' And then I recognized the reason for the repetitive autumn metaphor in my work. Once I realized that metaphor was recurring, I have focused on trees and their seeds and find that they are endlessly fascinating.

Another piece that I did was on the Mimosa tree ("Mimosa Dancing") and the wonderful leaves and seed pods that the mimosa tree has in combination. The Mimosa blooms early in the spring so that their seed pods are fully matured by summertime. They have the combination of those wonderful ferny leaves and the peapod-like form of the seeds. That combination is especially interesting.

Right now I've just completed a piece on the Beech tree and its seeds. The leaves and seeds are fascinating, complex forms. The Beech tree leaves have wonderful ribs and veins which are very pronounced. A cluster of several leaves gives a wonderful pattern, almost like strip piecing and their fall color is quite marked. The leaves between the ribs turn golden while the ribs are still green and make a fascinating pattern. That tree is the one I'm playing with these days. I just finished a small piece 11 x 14 inches that I did for practice. I'm rather pleased with it. I have been experimenting with inks to help emphasis the design in the fabrics. I enjoy working in a whole cloth quilt process using exquisite hand dyed fabrics by other dyers and then working with threads and stitch for the design. I have said a lot more than just Sourwood didn't I?

KM: You did good. This quilt is 34 [inches.] by 21 [inches.] Is that typical? Is that a typical size for you?

NC: That is a fairly typical size. The group that I'm working with now is a little larger than that, it is running thirty-six by twenty-eight inches, just scaled up a little. Some of my pieces have been substantially larger than that, but many of them are just about that size. It is a very comfortable size to work with. A lot of my work I use in my own home until it is sold so that works well too.

KM: What are your plans for "Sourwood Festoons"?

NC: It is on my website now. It is currently in a gallery and if it sells I hope it finds a very happy home. They are kind of like children, you want them to have good mates and find a good home. Otherwise I will keep it and enjoy it, and bring it out every fall, because I certainly enjoy it still.

KM: What about your interest in quiltmaking?

NC: I grew up with quilts. I grew up with a mother who was a professional seamstress who did not have the patience to teach me how to sew. I took the obligatory Home Ec program and made a skirt that I hated and never wore. I did not really learn to sew until I was an adult and had to do the curtains for my new home. We had spent all the money we had for the house down payment and the refrigerator that we had to buy for it, and with a new baby coming we didn't have the money for the curtains. I went to one of our wonderful North Carolina textile mill outlets that we used to have and bought the fabric and made them. I ended up having to remake every curtain because the sizes on the architect's drawing were the sizes of the window openings and did not include the moldings. So the eighteen foot picture window and side windows that I had in the front room actually turned out to be twenty-two feet wide, so everything had to be remade. I didn't sew again for years.

My mother, whose mother and grandmother both quilted, thought the idea of cutting up fabric and sewing it back together again was absolutely ludicrous. You can buy a blanket; it was so much easier than making a quilt. I grew up with that kind of thought. I enjoyed and used the quilts my foremothers had made, but I certainly had no interest in making them, but I loved fabric. My mother made all of my clothing. Some of my favorite memories of my mom are when either she or I would find a gorgeous piece of fabric and we would plan what she was going to make with it. That was just a joy, so I loved shopping for fabric and looking at fabric and touching and handling fabric, even though I wasn't doing anything with it personally. Even as an adult I would go in and look at fabric, on one such visit to a quilt shop I saw a pattern and thought, 'Oh I just love it.' It was white trillium and I just thought, 'Oh I want that.'

I realized the only way to have that piece was to make it. I bought the pattern and fabrics and cut this piece out with my sewing shears. I knew nothing about tools like rotary cutters or rulers or mats or anything else. Fortunately a good friend who lived in Oklahoma was a quilter and was even doing quilt restoration for museums. The entire time I made the piece, I was calling her and saying, 'Sue, how do I make a quarter of an inch wide stem without it fraying on both sides?' She would teach me over the telephone how to do everything necessary. Later I learned that the Trillium design was an intermediate to advanced quilt pattern. It was a small wall hanging, but the complexity of the appliqu work, probably because it was created by a person who designed for cross stitchers, was pretty awesome. But I made it and when I got it finished, I put a piece of black felt on the back so nobody could see my quilt stitches. [both laugh.] I needed to hide the stitches because they were so bad. [laughs.] I absolutely loved it and then I saw something else in a local quilt show where I thought 'I could do that.'

I had done hand work all my life. I've done some embroidery or crewel or needlework of some kind, macram, but strictly as an avocation. Then I quilted something else, and then I needed pillows for the couch, so I made pillows. I joined the local quilt guild, not so much because I wanted to make quilts, as much as I enjoyed being around people who quilted. I got started somewhat slowly but found that I was really enjoying it a lot. I have always found my needlework to be a good balance in life to what I had done both as a professional and as a volunteer. Much of the time I was working on things that were either so long range that it was hard to see what had been accomplished from one day to the next, or the work required influencing organizations or individuals. Maybe you could look back in a year and see what had been accomplished, but seldom where you could say 'I've put in eight hours and I can see eight hours of accomplishment.' With a needle and thread, I would put in an hour, and could see an hour's worth of results. That was satisfying since I'm strongly results oriented. Needlework provided that kind of balance. About six years ago I retired professionally from working as an organizational psychologist and began working full time in doing quiltmaking. That has been just a real joy.

KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why?

NC: The first quilts that excited me beyond measure were a group of quilts by African American quilters at the history museum in Columbus, Ohio. I lived in Ohio for a number of years. I don't know the name of the group of quilts, but they were pictorial quilts with such freedom, color and life to them. They just tremendously excited me. I had never seen anything like them before. All the quilts I had ever seen had been pretty straight forward block patchwork quilts. Mainly what my family did was block quilts, and I just found the African American quilts to be tremendously exciting.

Later I met that same friend, Sue Rose, who I mentioned before in Paducah. I was at a conference out in Saint Louis. Sue and I tried to get together every year or two so I called her up and I said, 'Hey I'm going to be in Saint Louis, would you like to meet and spend some time together after the conference is over?' She said, 'Well I can't, I'm going to the AQS [American Quilter's Society.] show in Paducah [Kentucky.].' I said, 'What is that?' I certainly wasn't a quilter at that time. It turned out one of the people who had been going with her group had to cancel out so they had space in the person's home they were staying in, so I met them there and went to the Paducah quilt show long before being a quilter. It was the year they opened the Museum of American Quilts and I walked in and saw Caryl Bryer Fallert's "Solar Eclipse 2" and was totally bowled over with the color, the movement, the design, her ability to capture such magnificent concept and idea. Caryl's work is something over the years that I've really, really loved. Ruth McDowell is another person I have studied with and really like her work a lot. She certainly has had a lot of influence on my piece work, because I not only do whole cloth quilts, but I do some piecing and it is usually done in the style that Ruth McDowell uses and teaches. Patty Hawkins' work inspires me. She deals with similar kind of motifs and concepts that I do and she has such an ability to extract the essence of what she is trying to say. I really admire what she does. There are just so many quilters who are just so wonderful. Judith Content, her estuaries, her use of silks, shibori dyeing and appliqu to create these wonderful evening scenes on the water are just magical. I can continue because there are just a number out there whose work is just phenomenal and very exciting to see.

KM: What does your friend Sue think of your quiltmaking?

NC: [laughs.] Sue is delighted to see that I continued on with it. She has been a big influence to me. We were next door neighbors for about seven years back in Ames, Iowa and then she and her husband and family moved to Centerville, Ohio and where we were again neighbors. Then she and her family moved to Missouri and then to Oklahoma and my family moved from first Ames, Iowa to Centerville, Ohio and now to Charlotte, but we have constantly kept in touch. Her work is more traditional than mine, and she has had the opportunity to work with a critique group over many years and it has been interesting. They call themselves a color group and I think they have probably aged out of meeting regularly any more, but we have spent many an hour on the phone talking quilting as well as sharing what we have done first with photographs and now with CDs and emails.

KM: Do you think of yourself more as an artist or a quiltmaker or do you even make the distinction?

NC: That's a really good question.

KM: It is one of my favorites.

NC: I'm not sure that I make a huge distinction there. If I had to weigh on one side or the other it would probably be artist, but artist with a particular medium that draws me more than others do. Certainly the fiber medium has drawn me all my life in one way or another.

KM: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today?

NC: Oh, the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today. I want to answer that in several different ways.

KM: Excellent.

NC: I think the biggest challenge to quiltmakers from a traditional standpoint today is that more and more of their sources are drying up. Many people will shop for fabric online by sending swatches of fabrics to an online e-store and ask the vendor to select some fabrics to go with the swatches and mail the packet to them. Many people prefer to be able to touch and feel the fabric themselves in making their selections. So I think sourcing of materials is an issue for many, and particularly traditional quilters. Unless they live in an area where there are a lot of resources available.

For the art quilter, I think getting recognition for the medium as an art form is probably the biggest issue and that is related to quilting being perceived as one of the lesser crafts primarily because mainly women do it. Crafts by in large are less often accepted as an art form. From a sales standpoint, the poor economy is not helping at this point in time. That pretty much covers it.

KM: Describe your studio.

NC: My studo is in the lower level of the house. Our house is perched on the side of a hill so you go upstairs to get into the living area. Initially I started in part of the smallest guest bedroom and then went into the largest guest bedroom and now I have moved into the second largest room in the house. It is in the lower level behind the garage where my husband's office had been. He very kindly exchanged places with me so I could have more office and more studio space.

Let's describe the studio. It is a longer room than it is square. One of the shorter walls has wall-to-wall bookcases that are floor to ceiling that are loaded with quilt books, magazines and supplies. There is some other stuff, a former hobby that I haven't totally weeded out yet. Then I have a cutting table/ pressing table that my husband constructed for me out of two TV stands from when TVs weren't as large as they are today. He put them on a riser and backed them up to each other so they have two shelves on each side. Then he put a box on top of them so that the top is the right height for me ergonomically. I can put my long rulers, my large drawing pads, and my box of freezer paper in there. The base is designed to be the exact size of a cutting board. I almost can't cut on anything else now because the height is so helpful.

He constructed a sewing table for me out of a sheet of press board with a hard smooth white surface. My sewing machine drops into it so it is flat and level and large, which is wonderful when quilting a large quilt. But there is too much stuff on top of it. It is a little cluttered at this point. Underneath the sewing table, I have bins of fabric and bins of interfacing. The table sits in front of the bookcases and next to the cutting and pressing table and they take up about half of the room. At the opposite end of the room is a floor to ceiling design wall that is about eight feet wide. My husband constructed it for me and it has both a white surface and a black surface so I can use it either way that I want it. I can just take the black felt down and use the white surface when I want to. There is a window next to that and between the window and the design wall is a two drawer file cabinet, on top of that is a little TV and then in front of the design wall on the wide side of the room a desk with four file drawers, my computer and printer, telephone, all that kind of stuff. On the other side of the room is another file cabinet that is recessed in the wall. Next to the file cabinet is a double door closet with shelves and hanging bars for my fabric. It is where most of the fabric that I use is kept. My batiks and hand dyes are in there. Fabrics that are from earlier years are in bins and in the garage and in the room stacked on top of each other. I haven't quite been able to let go of them yet, but they will have to move out at some period of time. I have another smaller design wall between the computer set up and the design wall at the end of the room that I use more as an inspiration wall. That pretty much describes it.

KM: Yes, it sounds like a nice place.

NC: It is. I had the opportunity to have a residency at McColl Center for Visual Arts for four months and had a fantastic studio there. There I learned that I need to be able to see my quilts from eighteen feet away to really understand the visual impact of a piece. That was part of the reason that we moved me downstairs so I could get that eighteen feet visual distance from the quilt. The room is probably twenty-two feet long if you included the bookcases. It is really helpful to be able to get that long view. I've tried all kinds of other things to get that visual distance, looking through the door peep holes and the wrong end of binoculars, and all that kind of stuff, but nothing is quite as effective as being able to see the stuff from a distance. I have really excellent lighting installed in the room too. I have two ceiling lighting fixtures of four tubes of florescent lights that include daylight florescent tubes and also have some flood lights that are focused on the design wall.

KM: How many hours a week do you quilt?

NC: Not enough. [both laugh.]

KM: Good answer.

NC: This last year and a half my mother-in-law who is in her nineties was quite ill and needed a lot of care and attention and this year she became quite ill, fell, broke her arm and had a long period where she was trying to recuperate and then had a stroke and died. Cleaning up her place after she was gone and the loss of energy that sets in with mourning has decreased my productivity this year. I've been coming out of that. Right now I'm spending about ten, twenty hours, but when things are flowing right it is closer to thirty, thirty-five. I've never quite made it to the forty that I thought I would do. It is moving back in the right direction and that feels so good.

KM: Have you ever used quilts to get through difficult times?

NC: Oh heavens yes. I remember as the drums of war were beating before we went into Iraq the second time, I got out fabric and just literally had to work on something interesting and fun as the TV droned on and the bombing began. That was a piece that really saw me through. Generally, I do more hand work, well I guess much of what I had to do recently in my difficult times has been sitting in hospital rooms, so I was taking a lot of hand work with me. I've been doing more embroidery recently as a result.

KM: What makes a quilt artistically powerful?

NC: What makes a quilt artistically powerful? Wow, that's a good question. I think it is when the artist understands what he or she is trying to say and has the ability to use art elements to convey that in a way that comes across to the viewer. To me art is communication, it is like writing or music or conversation, it is a communication between the artist and something inside the artist whether it is anger or love or passion or but something inside the artist. The first communication is the artist's understanding of that part of themselves that is trying to come out. It is usually not totally conscious but pulling something that is deeper than you could articulate. That is the first communication that is what is inside the artist and then inside the artist to the art work, and then from the art work to the viewer. Some artists are able to have art work that really helps the viewer understand something that they have never understood before, and sometimes that understanding is not even at a verbal level. In terms of art elements, I think great lines and great color; however, some of the most interesting art I see today is almost void of color. I see artists who are trying to get away from the use of color to do their art because it is so seductive. I'm still drawn to color, I'm drawn to texture, but good line and movement compels me.

KM: Are there any aspects of making a quilt that you do not enjoy?

NC: Oh yeah, putting the binding on. I think it needs to be done well. I'm one of those who likes to see work not only have something to say and be meaningful, but also to be well executed. I find some people can work raw edge and loose and do it successfully. I don't find that is something I can do with comfort, but let's see what else. Oh, sometimes I find piecing a curve just a little tedious if it is too tight of a curve to begin with. And I don't care for cleaning the machine, which I do every time I change the bobbin.

KM: Oh you are good.

NC: I find it works. [laughs.] It is the old saying, pay me now, or pay me later. [laughs.] If I don't clean it regularly, my sewing machine doesn't perform well, so cleaning is important. Regular cleaning is something Libby Lehman taught and taught that cleaning the machine on a regular basis will pay you large dividends.

Oh Lord the paperwork involved in being a professional quilter and trying to keep your work out there and that type of thing, that probably is my least favorite thing but highly important.

KM: Do you belong to any art or quilt groups?

NC: I belong to both craft and quilt groups. I belong to a local quilt guild, they supported me and I continue to support them. I belong to SAQA [Studio Art Quilt Associates.] and I'm a professional member of SAQA. That association is certainly something that I have found very valuable. I'm regularly a member of the International Quilts Association and the American Crafts Association. I am a member of the QuiltArt List and several small local art and quilt groups. My goal this year is to join at least one regional or local art association.

KM: Why is that important to you?

NC: I'm finding more and more I'm identifying with the art part and I have just a real commitment for people to understand that art can be made in the quilt medium. I think the way I can do it, is to be out there with other artists and be associated with other artists.

KM: You mentioned taking a lot of classes, is that important to you also?

NC: I find the way I nurture the artist within me is to take classes. Anybody who has done things really well or who I admire I will learn something from, it may not be precisely what the class is about, it maybe something else. They've learned something that I can learn and it is such a pleasure to spend a day or preferably a week focused on some aspect of art or quilting. My preference is for long classes, a three-day minimum is a restorative thing. Classes used to be the way I learned and I was trying to learn as fast as I could. Now it is more a focus on nurturing than it is a focus on learning.

KM: Is there anything else you would like to add to the interview before we conclude?

NC: I'm seeing more and more people wanting to learn about basic art elements and principles and utilize them. As people try to make their own original creations they are realizing that they need to go back to the fundamentals that make any art good. Learning the fundamentals really helps make your work better rather than stumbling your way into a design. I think that is a healthy trend.

KM: I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to spend it with me, and we are going to conclude our interview at 6:50. Thank you.