Beth Markel

I am a 5th generation quilter and artist who specializes in bright, bold, exciting art quilts. There are very few things in the art world I won’t try, from developing and printing my own B/W photographs, to dying fabric in glorious vats of deep blue indigo, throwing pots, and hiking trails to get the “perfect” shot of mountains in autumn. Welcome to my colorful world!

While I started out throwing pots and loving my hands in the clay at an early age, I fell in love with photography as a teenager, and to this day take hundreds and hundreds of photographs each year. As a very young girl, I would sit under my grandmother’s quilting rack while she stitched, and she helped me practice my spelling or reciting the times tables. It was quite sublime. Grandma Broyles was smart, kind, and wise - and always, always encouraging.

Textile art is a happy marriage between the tactile and the visual.

Visual images intrigue me. The play of shadow and light is a common subject, as well as “everyday” images: stacks of black and white laundry hampers in a store; rows and rows of neatly organized nail polish, a remarkably bright orange Baltimore Oriole that lands on my feeder, and the first purple crocus poking their heads through the snow as winter is being shaken off.

I believe we have to look for beauty in the ordinary. Every day.

I’m also passionate about color, visual repetition, texture, pattern, and good design. 

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