Interview with Norma Bradley

Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I'm conducting a Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Norma Bradley. Norma is in Asheville, North Carolina and I'm in Naperville, Illinois so we are conducting this interview over the telephone. Today's date is February 17, 2009. It is now 9:08 in the morning. Norma thank you so much for taking time out of your day to do this interview with me.

Norma Bradley (NB): It is my pleasure.

KM: Please tell me about your quilt "River Link."

NB: To tell you about "River Link," I also have to tell you a little bit about the Earth Quilt Project. An Earth Quilt is a garden in a quilt design. The first Earth Quilt was created at the University of North Carolina at Asheville in response to the idea that a nuclear dump, a high level nuclear repository, was going to be put into 112,000 acres of farm land in three counties. [This included the farm I had first lived on and my new home in Sandy Mush. I moved from New York City to North Carolina in 1980.] Each garden that I've created represents the community that I was in as a visiting artist. There are about 65 gardens throughout the States of NC, SC and beyond. The idea was to give each community the opportunity feel proud of their community and to symbolically represent who they are in shapes, colors, and textures. "River Link" was a garden that I created along with 500 children and community members. [The project was documented by Martin Media and HGTV.]

Administrators and teachers at the school where River Link was created wanted to celebrate the established part of the community as far back as the Catawba Indians. They also wanted to celebrate the new neighborhoods being formed with people settling in the area from all over the United States. They were trying to create a harmonious project in which older established community members worked along side new members of the community. I showed slides of the history of the Earth Quilt Project so the students got an understanding of symbolism; why a certain shape might represent something to me and how I came to do that particular design in that specific community. Then they started creating their own designs. I encouraged them to express what they were feeling about their community and about why their community was different than another community. With "River Link," we unearthed [laughs.] some of the information about Catawba Indians and learned that Catawba Indians had a very peaceful, harmonious community. As the students drew I watched them. One student created a form that looked like the river and that idea stayed with me. I returned to my studio with 200 student designs and began to draw. I don't plan these things ahead of time. They happen spontaneously from me, from whatever I've learned from the community and what I've seen during my time at the school. I also want to say that I have students, teachers and administrators bring fabric quilts into the school and invite the owner of the quilts tell the stories they hold. Even if it is just, 'I found it in an attic,' but obviously the stories are much richer than that. People are so connected to their quilts. There is a dialogue set up at the school during this entire time that was never there before. The principal brought her quilt in and started talking about her family. [cries.] This is quite emotional.

KM: That is quite alright.

NB: [pause while crying.] It is quite an amazing project.

KM: You say it is in Gold Hill Elementary in Fort Mills, South Carolina and it was done in 2003.

NB: Right.

KM: It is 67 feet long by 25 feet wide.

NB: Right. There were trees at the site already and so I used those trees at the site and we incorporated them into the garden design. You will see that there are six trees. An art teacher brought in something from her land and in the far part of the garden you can see a rock surrounded by some plants. I have details of it, but that came from her land and is from the Catawba Indians. On the other side you will see that there is a water fountain to feed birds and that represents nurturing. Everything in the garden has symbolic meaning. The wood is symbolic

of technology, our forests and protection. The river rock is symbolic of the river, wisdom, continuity and connection. The path running through the garden that you can see is located at the center in the shape of a rectangle. This shape divides the community and shows some resistance to totally connect and it is also a path to connection. In the garden itself there are bulbs that students planted. They represent renewal. The evergreens symbolize stability and then we have season plants and they are symbolic of celebration. The children wrote poetry about the garden and there was a big celebration that happened for the entire community with music, dance and poetry. It was an evening celebration and it was really quite wonderful. The chorus sang and students danced in the garden. This type of celebration happened in almost all the communities where there are Earth Quilts. The process was integrated into the entire school curriculum. I think we collected about fifty fabric quilts from the neighborhood and from the school and those were on display as well. It is quite a happening. [laughs.] I don't know what else you want to know about that particular garden.

KM: Tell me about how you came up with the concept, when you began, that kind of thing.

NB: I moved from New York City to Sandy Mush [laughs.] in western North Carolina. Came for the summer and just totally fell in love with this farm community and all the people living in it and just didn't want to leave and we stayed and ended up buying land and building a house. In 1986, the Department of Energy decided this would be a good place to install a high level nuclear repository. At the time, I didn't realize they wanted 112,000 acres in three counties. Buncombe, Madison, and Haywood Counties. The entire community started to fight this idea. I was helping politically. Because of my work in the schools I got to know the people on the Charles Kuralt Show and I went to New York and talked to them about the situation. All of us in our own way did everything we could but it wasn't helping me personally and I started to get physically sick. I just woke up one morning with the idea of doing a garden. I didn't call it an Earth Quilt at that time, but I was making fabric quilts with my neighbors. I took a lap quilt workshop with Georgia Bonesteel. We created an 18 inch inch block and I thought, 'Well if Georgia can do a lap quilt that is made with 18 inch blocks, why I can't I do an earth quilt that is 18 feet?' I called the art department at UNCA and I said I want to do this project on campus and they said, 'Great do it!' So I asked some dancers to join me in the effort and they interpreted the garden and created a dance piece on the campus inside the garden to celebrate the earth. What I did is I took this situation that was making me sick and with creativity and personal expression I turned it around into something hopeful. [I realized this sometime later.] To me quilts are about communication, process and hope. That is what this particular project was about. This first quilt at UNCA was a temporary piece. They didn't want a permanent piece at the time, so I went into my yard and raked up leaves and pinecones and brought them to the site. I located bamboo in a friends yard and we did the first one surrounded by bamboo that was tied at the corners. At the center I had a picket fence to symbolize the "American dream." Inside the fence were cut flowers that I changed every few days, for about a month. I collected arrowheads [that were found in Sandy Mush.] and buried some in the garden to represent my community that has Cherokee Heritage. We did the first garden and I thought well that is it. I've done environmental sculpture in New York City. Wel,l it wasn't it. It was just the beginning of a huge, huge project that spanned almost 23 years. I just retired the project. I traveled around to schools, rehab centers, and hospitals throughout our state of North Carolina. I did one in Washington, D.C. I did one in Virginia and several in South Carolina. That is the history of that project. It just felt like time for either someone else to take it over or to really bring it to a close. I still get to lecture about Earth Quilts. I still do some consulting if other communities want to do one, but I'm not doing the Earth Quilt installations anymore.

KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking.

NB: When I was a little girl I slept under a quilt [laughs.] that felt different to anything else I had slept under. It was a summer quilt because I lived in New York City and it was too chilly for the winter, but in the summer this quilt would come out of the trunk and it just felt wonderful. I'm very tactile and it was just like, 'Wow! What is this?' I was also an interior designer and worked with cloth all the time and cloth is part of my family heritage as well. I won't go into those details, but I just loved the idea of cloth as an art medium. I'm very taken with the idea of people using their creativity in many ways. I moved to Sandy Mush, I really got a whole lesson on what quilts were and how people shared their community life through quilts and the stories that they told. I was helping friends with tobacco and corn and cattle and at lunchtime they would bring out these quilts because they knew I was interested. They would start talking about them and telling me stories about them. I learned about their lives through their quilts. I decided I wanted to make a quilt. My daughter was in New York and I made her a quilt and brought her back here [laughs.] and it was just really very precious. I thought, 'It won't be hard. You've been sewing all your life. You've been involved with cloth,' and I realized without Dee Surrett's help [laughs.] I would not have completed that quilt. The art quilt idea took on a life of its own because I'm coming from a fine art background, my quilts after a number of years started to change from traditional pieced [bed.] quilts to appliqud art quilts that are put on the wall and not on the bed. I like the idea that they hold history, that they tell a story, that they are easy to carry around [laughs.] and that they are beautiful. They allow me to express myself personally. I've gotten into transferring photographs now and also celebrating people who have passed and doing small pieces with images of people. In schools, I encourage children to express themselves through their quilt pieces and every one of them is different. I don't go in with a traditional idea. I have developed techniques over the years where they can express themselves with scissors, colors, needles and thread. A lot of my passion is sharing what I know and allowing other people to share their quilts, and to invite them to talk about why quilt making is important to them. The last school I was in, we had a 91 year old man come to the classroom and talk about quilting with his wife and his daughter and that was precious, it was really quite an honor to have him there. [The students loved him and his interest in their work.]

KM: What are your favorite techniques and materials?

NB: At this point, I seem to be shifting over a little bit and using recycled materials and a lot of times recycled materials from designers that throw away these expensive fabrics. I like to do a lot of layering and I really love appliqu because to me appliqu is like using the paintbrush. I'm drawing with my scissor and then applying layers on top of layers until I've said what I have to say. I really like a variety of techniques. I use fabric paint and occasionally I dye fabric, but I tend to use paint more than dye. I'm using photographs on my pieces as well now and incorporating those into those layered pieces. They are a much more personal body of work.

KM: Do you machine or hand appliqu?

NB: I do both. I do machine appliqu, with cloth that has been bonded. You can do a lot with bonding and then stitching and I love free motion stitching. I think it's my absolute favorite thing. [laughs.] I love my machine and I love getting on there and drawing with the needle. I don't plan the stitching. I just get on there and start to stitch and see what happens. I get inspired by what I'm seeing right in front of me. Sometimes I am inspired by the shapes that I've appliqud onto the fabric. [I stitch and then hang the work on my work wall and look at it until an idea comes.] I like to do abstract work and more realistic work about the landscape. Either creating flowers or creating grasses or I love trees and I do a lot with tree images. I think where the idea for this new body of work came from, is looking at the skin of a tree, just looking at that bark and how it forms and the layers that form on it.

KM: Do you work in a series?

NB: I have been working in a series. Definitely. This last group I did about ten in this one particular series. Then there are tree themes that just keep coming up. I don't know if that is called a series or not. This new body of work definitely is a series. It is over when it is over. [laughs.]

KM: Tell me a little bit more about your creative process.

NB: I have a studio. I've built a studio behind my house and sometimes there is just this urge to create. I mean it is just like if I've gone a few days without being in there and stitching on a machine or moving fabric around or playing with color I can just feel it, I just know I have to be in my studio. I tend to work well when I'm alone in my studio. I have everything I need. It is a very beautiful space. It has great light. I don't have to turn on lights during the day and it has a heater and I just walk into this wonderful little building and I'm totally transformed. I spend as much time as possible in there until my body begins to feel it or I get thirsty or need something to eat. Once I start working, I'm just there.

KM: Since you mentioned your studio, describe it to me.

NB: It's an 18 foot by 19 foot building. It has four skylights and it has sliding doors and French doors and then another door. I have two windows that overlook Mount Pisgah [on the Blue Ridge Parkway.] and so do the sliding doors. I have a small flower garden outside that I use for inspiration sometimes. I have two tables that fold to very small size, or I can put two tables together. I guess they are each 6 foot tables. When I'm working on a really big piece, I put the two tables together. The room is very flexible. I have my sewing machine set up in one place, but the rest of the room is wide-open space so that I can put quilts on the floor. I have a whole wall where I have this series right now and then I have an art wall that I push pins into, that I can tack things up and stand back and see what I'm looking at. I always tack things up on the wall to work with these quilts. [There are spot lights that reflect onto the pieces on the walls and this makes it feel more like gallery space.]

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

NB: I belong to the Southern Highland Craft Guild and I'm a member of LINT, which stands for Ladies in New Textiles, and it's a professional fiber group. Everybody in the group is a professional textile artist. What else? I'm trying to think of other things but I can't at the moment, but those two are the major ones. [I am also a member of Tri State Sculptors, Asheville Art Museum and Black Mountain College Museum.]

KM: Why is belonging to these groups important to you?

NB: To have someone to share my passion. Each of us works very differently. We all have very different styles and so we share with each other. It is wonderful sharing. I love that about being with people who are interested in textiles, they are not afraid to share their techniques. They are more than willing to. We support each other in shows, we do shows together and we talk about our work. We don't do a lot of critique, but occasionally if someone wants some input we will do that. It's just a great, lovely group of women and it is all ages. We have some people in their thirties and some people in their seventies so it is very helpful because of technology [lauhs.] The younger members know a lot more about technology than most of us do. It's a congenial group. There are thirteen women in the group. I really enjoy that.

KM: You mentioned technology. How has advances in technology influenced your work?

NB: That is a very interesting question. For one thing I love photography. I've been shooting images since I was about eight years old, and so now I'm incorporating photographs into my work. I just went to digital photography about four years ago so I can now just go outside and take a picture, download it and put it on a scanner and add other things to it or just pull it up and change it and get what I want and print it out. It's quick, it's interesting. At times computer work can take a lot of time. [laughs.] I don't like to spend a lot of time on the computer. That isn't my interest. I like more hand work than the computer but it certainly has changed my work, that's for sure.

KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out?

NB: Just do what you love. Do a lot of looking. Look at other people's work, go to shows, see what it is that you like to do, make notes, and just get in there and start working. Spend time working with the fabric and learning what you need to know because you can learn what you realize you need to learn. Once you start working you might say, 'Oh I want to do this and I don't know how,' then get someone to help you do it. The other way to do it is to take classes and just learn some traditional techniques and new techniques and go from there.

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

NB: That is an interesting question because I grappled with that a lot. I don't think about it a lot anymore. My interest is in quilts, but I'm a studio artist and teaching artist. I'm interpreting my art form using the textile. I've been called a quilter. I've also been called a landscape architect and [laughs.] and a lot of other things but I really feel that I'm an artist, a creative person with an education and will to create.

KM: I want to go back to the Earth Quilt Project. Why did you decide to call them quilts?

NB: I think someone else called them quilts. [I called them Earth Work Installations at first.] Well, they looked like quilts. At that time I was so involved with the fine art world that I didn't call them quilts. We are talking about 23 years ago. I didn't want to limit it to the idea of the quilt and I really wasn't thinking about a title at that point, I just had to say what I had to say. Then someone else said something about earth quilts and I thought well that really is what I'm doing here and so I started using it and it felt right. There is something about the warmth of a quilt that I really like. Symbolically it is about communication. I think this is what I'm going to call it and it just had a life of its own. It wasn't really anything I thought about a lot. This project just took off on its own and sailed all the way. [laughs.]

KM: Tell me about your paper quilts.

NB: The paper quilts I generally do in schools with children. I use paper to teach techniques for drawing with the scissor. I talk about the use of the scissor to draw a line and I really basically have them start in paper before they go to fabric and they kind of loosen up and they see that they can draw images in this way. It's been a wonderful vehicle. I generally will put all the work on one big piece of paper and turn it into a quilt. I've done these projects with people from pre-school up to 90 years old in nursing homes. It is just a very quick technique and easier technique than cloth for short projects [paper is not as flexible as cloth so it is easier to handle.] With cloth, I need to have irons available to bond the cloth. I did one paper quilt recently out of handmade paper and I liked it a lot and I might pursue that. It had a lot of hand embroidery on the piece. I like to do hand embroidery when I have time.

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

NB: I don't know that there is a challenge. I think there are different types of quiltmakers. There are people who just do them for themselves. I still visit Sandy Mush and there are people still quilting and they don't think about where they are going to sell them or what they are going to do with them. They do it because they need to do it, because they love doing it. There are people who want to earn a living at selling quilts. There are just different types of quilters and I think that fiber has been a challenge to sell. I've seen that myself, although I do sell my quilts, but I certainly couldn't think about only making a living on selling a piece. It definitely has to have, I have to have another way to do that and I do it by teaching and also working for Handmade in America, so that I don't have to worry about making a quilt to sell it, I do it because I need to do it and want to do it. I couldn't comment on how other people feel about it, but I don't feel it is a challenge. If that is the type of challenge you mean.

KM: You've mentioned Handmade in America, you've mentioned working in your studio, you mentioned teaching; how do you balance your time?

NB: That is an interesting question. [laughs.] I work for Handmade in America part time so I do have time in my studio and I do residencies, but I only do them once or twice a year. Mostly because I love doing them and I like also getting into other communities so that I can experience something new and learn from the people in that community. It broadens my prospective. It is sometimes a challenge to balance all three, but I find it, it works. I also do another thing. I go to an artist colony once a year for three weeks. One year I even went twice for three weeks and I find that wonderful because there I'm totally by myself and that's when this new body of work came out is when I just spent time alone and got to just do whatever I was feeling without any interruption of the creative process. That is really wonderful for me.

KM: Tell me some more about the artist colony.

NB: There is an artist colony in Rabun Gap, Georgia called the Hambidge Art Center. You apply to get invited. I went a number of years ago and I've been going every year since because it's an hour and forty-five minutes from my home. It's on 600 acres of natural forest with rivers and lakes running through it. The valley is very much like Sandy Mush and is very beautiful.

I have a big studio to myself. The other artists in residence are asked not to visit each other unless they are asked and the only thing we are required to do is have a gourmet meal together at night [laughs.] to share ideas. We usually have one night of the week where we will visit different studios and see what people are doing, if they want it. It really allows me to express myself and not worry about anyone, either interrupting or making a comment at a strategic moment that might just change my whole path. It is quite wonderful. It is a real blessing.

KM: How long do you go for?

NB: I usually go for three weeks. I find it takes that. The first week I'm usually unwinding from life [laughs.] and then I kind of, get in the flow of working. The second week and the third week you are just sailing along. I also meet other people from Atlanta and from other states. I was invited to participate in two group shows because of the work that I was producing. A board member visited my studio and invited me to be in a show in Atlanta. The show was all textiles (new work in textiles) so that was quite exciting.

KM: How is going to the artist colony different than a residency?

NB: I'm working during a residency. A residency means the school hires me to come in and do a project. During the last residency I worked on three quilts with three different classes in a week. [the theme decided on by the teachers, was community.] I brought the three quilts back to my studio and it took me another few weeks to finish them. [laughs.] At Hambidge, I am not required to produce anything. I can go there and do absolutely nothing. However, I start to work as soon as I unpack. I can go in there and just unwind or think or do whatever it is I need to do without the pressures of having to be in a classroom at a certain time and to be there for the whole day and organize and orchestrate the entire project.

KM: How do you want to be remembered?

NB: Oh goodness, how do I want to be remembered? As a kind person [laughs.] who helps other people ignite their creativity.

KM: Very nice. What do you think makes a quilt artistically powerful?

NB: I think that is personal. I think quilts hold energy and when I see a quilt, when I go to a quilt show for example, I am often overwhelmed by all that I'm seeing and experiencing. I can't say, sometimes it's a color, sometimes its shapes, sometimes it's texture, sometimes it's technique, just a whole variety of things.

KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why?

NB: I've been drawn to a lot of artists work. I've been drawn to Henry Matisse's work because of his use of color and his use of the scissor as a tool. I am drawn to Nancy Crow's work because of the energy that is in her work and the simplicity. I just saw a quilt show with some of Nancy's work and she is doing something very dynamic, very strong with very simple lines and colors that are so strong that they hold so much power. Her quilts were wonderful. [I admire what Nancy does for the quilt world and the respect she has for both traditional work and contemporary work.] So many artists inspire me. I like Joseph Albers' work because of his use of color interaction. There are others, many other quilters and artists who inspire me. There are some Japanese quilters. I like Japanese art. I like its simplicity of line and connections to our natural world. I can tell you there is a Japanese artist who does a lot with tree images. Her name is Noriko Endo and I really love her work. I think it is just spectacular [full of deep feeling for trees.] I like creating landscapes with little tiny pieces of fabric. I like Jane Sassaman's work because I like the strength, color, the stylized flowers that she creates and I like her designs. I've taken a workshop with Jane and with Nancy as well. I like some of the Australian artists because many are inspired by nature and for their use of texture. [Their work is usually very organic. Jenny Hearn is from South Africa and I am inspired by her full spectrum of color. She also creates sculptural pieces with cloth, a path that I have taken in early work.] I can't think of all the different people that have inspired me but there have been many. [laughs.]

KM: Is there anything that you would like to share before we conclude that I haven't touched upon?

NB Yes, I guess that I'm honored to have this opportunity and to have the history of the Earth Quilt Project documented in some way is a real pleasure and a real honor, for me and the hundreds of people that I got to work with.

KM: Why is quiltmaking important to you?

NB: I guess it's because it is about community and community has always been an important part of my life. It's about the creative process and the will to create, and the fact that it has given so many women and men the opportunity to create without a fine arts background, without art history degrees, that it is coming from a very natural place. I really appreciate that. I think every human being has that need to say something in their own voice and I really appreciate that so many people have had that opportunity through creating quilts; people who are living on farms in rural areas, living quietly and living within community. I like the idea that quilts bring so many people together.

KM: Tell me if you have ever used quiltmaking to get through a difficult time.

NB: That was the Earth Quilt Project. It saved my life. [laughs.] Definitely. I think all my quilts get me through some kind of challenge, even landscapes. The involvement of looking, of doing, getting away from what might be bothering me and being able to get outside myself. Being with the landscape and enjoying the continuity of nature, has been real important. So I would say all of my quilts [laughs.] get me through challenging times. [laughs.]

KM: I want to thank you for taking time out of your day and sharing with me and you were wonderful.

NB: Thank you so much, it was great. [laughs.]

KM: We are going to conclude our interview at 9:51.