Wandering the Bone House: Art Quilts by Marika Pineda

Please join us on Saturday, February 4th from 4-6pm for an exhibition opening and artist’s reception. Refreshments will be served.

Wandering the Bone House: Art Quilts by Marika Pineda

Southside Branch Library, February 1-28, 2023

Santa Fe Public Library is pleased to present the artwork of one of our own - Southside Branch Reference Librarian, writer, and artist Marika Pineda. The exhibition, Wandering the Bone House, is a collection of art quilts, and will be on view at Southside Branch Library throughout the month of February.

The word “quilt” invokes another word: “grandmother.” If we were lucky enough to have had quilters in the family, we can thank them for their artistry and the comfort they provided. Art quilts, however, do not exist to provide domestic comfort. They are generally vertical, meant for the wall, and do not appreciate laundering any more than would a painting. Like traditional quilts, art quilts generally have three layers sandwiched together and held together by stitching. The similarities end there.

Marika makes art quilts using hand dye, printing, layering, piecing, and fusing techniques. Most of the compositions are created intuitively on a design wall, rather than pre-planned. Her work has been shown in juried group exhibitions at art centers and museums throughout Texas, and multiple venues in Oregon. Her work has appeared internationally as part of a juried exhibition that toured in Shanghai and throughout the British Isles. Her piece “Homestead,” was shown at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky, and at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts. In Santa Fe, her work was included in the group show Live Wire: Materials of a Revolution at the Zane Bennett Contemporary Art/Form & Concept gallery in 2020.

Marika is excited to share her artwork with the library community. She became interested in making art quilts around 2010, shortly after making a few bed quilts. She gravitated to textiles because of the intimate role they play in our physical lives, their tactile nature, and the endless range of possibilities for manipulation. This February marks her one year anniversary as a Librarian with Santa Fe Public Library.

Artist Statement: Wandering the Bone House

Several years ago I began a series of art quilts to explore the experience I had with cancer in 2009. I set out to revisit some of the lingering trauma from my treatment, and to look at how I relate to my post-cancer physical self. I experienced my health crisis as a cellular betrayal that forced me into sustained dialogue with physical mechanics and mortality, and the artwork included images related to fear and healing. I called that series “Bone House,” referring to my own body.

More recent work in the evolving series includes landscape imagery as part of the beautiful “bone house” that we all inhabit between soil and sky.