O'Brien County

I am adding the O'Brien County (Iowa), Barn Quilts to the side-bar. With their web page hosted by the Economic Development Corporation, O'Brien County has over 30 Barn Quilts and a Recipe Collection.

On Wisconsin...

Marquette County Home & Community Education Association (HCE) is working with you and Marquette County groups to create, hang, and promote the Barn Quilts of Marquette County! Partners include UW Extension, Marquette County Historical Society, Montello Historical Preservation Society, Maggie Mae’s Café, and more

A Request for Barn Quilt Location is available on line at: http://www.uwex.edu/ces/cty/marquette/

or contact:

Marquette County Barn Quilt Project
Attn: Louise Back
N149 County Road T
Endeavor, WI 53930

or

Attn: Betty Rohde
N8098 Duck Creek Avenue
Neshkoro, WI 54960

more from the OHQT...

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The Oconee Heritage Quilt Trail You Tube Video

(linked here)

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from the Palmetto State...

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The public is invited to the dedication of the Oconee Heritage Quilt Trail (OHQT) on Tuesday, February 16, 2010. The dedication will begin at 4 p.m. at Keowee Elementary School located on Keowee School Road. It will then move to the Oconee Conservatory of Fine Arts (, located across from the Walhalla Civic Auditorium, 101 East North Broad Street, Walhalla; and will end at the Oconee Heritage Museum, located at 123 Brown Square Drive, Walhalla, at approximately 5:15 pm.

The OHQT is sponsored by the Blue Ridge Arts Council in concert with a group of volunteers dedicated to putting South Carolina on the National Quilt Trail. The first three quilts have been completed and several others are in production. The quilts have been painted on specially prepared boards to be mounted on buildings in the area.

The patterns and their locations include a Mariner’s Compass pattern painted by students of Keowee Elementary School to be hung at the front entrance; a Goose in the Pond pattern to be hung on the Oconee Conservatory of Fine Arts; and a Rocky Mountain Road pattern to be hung on the Oconee Heritage Center. This last quilt is on display in the Heritage Center and was originally made by Lena Mae Land Talley of Mountain Rest, SC.

Please visit the Oconee Heritage Quilt Trail web site for history of the National Quilt Trail at (http://www.oconeeheritagequilttrail.com/).

Blue Ridge Arts Center, 111 E. South Second St., Seneca, SC 29678-3403; Phone/Fax: (864) 882-2722E-mail: (office@blueridgeartscenter.com) Web: (http://www.blueridgeartscenter.com/)

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The above press release was captured from Tom Starland's blog " Carolina Arts Unleashed ".

Lewis, Iowa

The town of Lewis, Iowa is a quiet community located on a hill top overlooking the Nishnabotna River Valley and the Lewis Cold Springs Lake. A population of 444 people enjoy a rural location with a rich historical background, surrounded by abundant agricultural endeavors and a vibrant community organization. Active church groups, a great school district and goals to improve the looks, pride and housing in the area make for continuing motivation for a thriving environment.

They currently have over 30 Barn Quilts in Lewis... with only 444 people living in 0.5 Square Miles! I have not found a Cass County Barn Quilt Trail, but if you get to Lewis I don't think you will have trouble spotting one. Check their website at: http://www.cityoflewis.com/

NJ & NC & Ky

The Garden State (New Jersey), has been listed on the side-bar as having one web-site. There does exist enough information to list several of the individual counties. The Barn Quilt Association of New Jersey is a program of the New Jersey Museum of Agriculture. They are off to a fine start and have created their own 2010 calender. The New Jeresy counties now listed are Middlesex, Sussex, and Warren. Efforts are being made in a few more counties, and I will try to keep my eyes out for them as they come on-line.

From the Asheville Citizen-Times: Barbara Webster, executive director of Quilt Trails of Western North Carolina, accepted a first-place award in the category “promotions” for the Burnsville Quilt Trail at the recent Small Town Main Street 2010 Awards. They are also hosting a "Secret party for the ladies..." on Thursday February 11th. Visit their website for more information (www.quilttrailswnc.org)

Breathitt County (Kentucky) Museum Director Janie Griffith writes on the breathittonline.com/blog that : A very exciting workshop, designed to promote our quilting heritage, is being planned for Wednesday, February 17th. The event will be held at the newly renovated county extension office on Main Street in Jackson. Mrs. Martha Yount County Extension Agent for Family & Consumer Sciences is in charge of the workshop which will take place at 12 noon. Members of the homemaker club and others interested in creating barn squares are invited. The workshop is being presented by Perry County Family and Consumer Science Extension Agent, Ms. Glenna Wooten.

Ms. Wooten’s Kentucky Quilt Trail lesson will begin with a brief history of how quilt trails first began, and how the movement has spread across Kentucky. Included is a PowerPoint slide presentation showing quilt blocks from various counties. During the class, participants will receive handouts consisting of existing trails guidelines and will learn how to set up guidelines for a trail in Breathitt County. Funding for this project will also be discussed.

Recently, quilt trails have been organized in Perry and several other area counties. In 2006, Ms. Wooten received a grant for the quilt blocks in Perry County. Since that time, volunteers have painted and mounted around 30 quilt blocks throughout the county. Ms. Wooten’s lesson was made possible through a joint effort of the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Extension Homemakers Association through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. During the month of February, Ms. Wooten will travel through eight neighboring counties, teaching the lesson to other homemaker clubs and interested individuals.

The February 17th meeting in Jackson will consist of a light luncheon, followed by the quilt trails presentation. After the program, participants will visit the Breathitt County Museum to view first hand examples of barn squares during various stages of creation painted by museum director and local artist Janie Griffith.If you are interested in joining in and becoming part of this exciting project, be sure and attend this special workshop. Mark your calendars for 12 noon, Wednesday, February 17th and be at the extension office prepared to roll up your sleeves and get started on a bright and colorful Kentucky barn square!

Barn Quilts are Art

I interject the following to provoke thought ...

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http://www.artlex.com/

elitism and elitist - The belief that certain persons deserve favored treatment by virtue of their superior artistic or intellectual accomplishments, or because of some other real or perceived status. People and things reach various levels of achievement, of success, and for better or worse, people judge the qualities of other people and things. But elitism is a tendency to codify levels of artistic sophistication into a hierarchical system that some would call pretentiously exclusionary, and others realistic. Elitism is the sense of entitlement that follows from this attitude, and the control or dominance by a group of elitists — the people who take this view of their position. Elitism always elicits aesthetic questions about defining art, who is an authority about it, and what that means for people who aren't.


Elitism in the art world is the insistence that art is somehow out of the realm of common experience, that its pleasures are not available to everyone. It has become increasingly necessary to read texts (artists' statements, wall labels or plaques, articles of art criticism, etc.) in order to understand certain works of art, but this is what great contemporary art does: It advances through ideas, by engaging our minds. Art galleries, because their offerings are commodities, are invariably commercial enterprises, but they are among the only places where the public can see art free of charge. Museums serve comparable roles as a community's storehouse of art, exhibiting works to their visitors, educating visitors to the works' significance, garnering support in ways unlike the galleries'. Wherever encounters with art occur, they always demand the viewer's attention and receptivity. Failure to embrace those opportunities are at least, simply that: losses of opportunities, significant as those can be.