Wenger: more than quilts

With her art, Eunice Wenger appeals to the eyes as well as the spirit.

Wenger's new art exhibition, "Quilts to Collage," strikes the observer with stunning colors. Pieces form a timeline of her works' evolution from fine traditional handiwork to fluid artistic expression. Beginning with embroidery in 1987, pieces are an assortment of fabric, handmade paper, stones, stitching, and bits of newspaper.

Each piece of art is laid out in a visually appealing manner, calling attention to the meaning behind the collage. She writes in her artist's statement that her goal is "to see how [her] life is similar to that of others, thereby identifying larger themes. What we share is more than what divides us."

With a variety of media, Wenger achieves an array of color, meaning, and texture otherwise nearly undiscovered in the world of traditional quilting.

One such multimedia piece, Natura, uses fabric sewn to a paper background for a depiction of Mother Nature based on South American culture. Vivid greens and blues portray a woman's face surrounded by a radiating halo. Each halo shows a different aspect of nature: closest to her face are tiny dancing figures, which are in turn haloed by swimming fish, followed by flowers then trees and finally a beautiful night sky.

One student saw this as an attempt to relate the sense of interdependency and contact that each individual may have with their own community, and in turn, with the greater surrounding world. Another saw it as an example of the of feminist theme in Wenger's work which began in the '90s.

Wenger returned to college in 1987 to study Art Education. That year, she began to derive a certain pleasure from ignoring the traditional quilting patterns she had become accustomed to, instead creating her own designs in fabric and thread. She also began to integrate handmade paper into her sewing fiascos, which became multimedia expressions of her then-current interests. One of these multimedia pieces, completed in 1989, contains fragments of the Berlin wall, surrounded by brilliant colored fabric.

Wenger's other works include her Language of the Goddess (1980) and the Hagia Sophia (1998), both of which use elements other than the simple paper and fabric. The exhibit displays not only framed art, but 3-D forms as well, including several boxes filled with silk covered stones, individually wrapped and sewn, and a few hanging objects.

The exhibit will run in the Hartzler gallery from Feb. 6 to March 4.