The natural world is a common denominator across Vicki Conley’s artistic journey. From her command of clay through years of pottery making, to the flora and fauna in her quills, her artistry portrays a mindful consideration of the beauty of our environment. Vicki pivoted to quilting after 42 years as a studio potter. As the proprietor of Pinon Pottery, she specialized in stoneware items for the home and everyday use. However, pottery didn’t offer the versatility and creative expansiveness that she now finds in quiltmaking. “You’re throwing 10,000 pounds of clay a year, making the same things repeatedly, and it’s very labor intensive,” Vicki said. “While it’s gratifying that people want to collect it, it’s not very fulfilling creatively.” In 2022 she retired from pottery completely, now focusing on quilting full time.
Since her artistic pivot, she has become known for her art quilts, in particular her national parks poster quilts. Before developing this signature series, she simply quilted works derived from her experiences traveling to and camping in other public lands. After entering a call for “textile posters,” she found a niche in representations of our national parks designed in the style of historic promotional posters, with additional inspiration from her own photographs and memories.
Over the past 20 years, Vicki has developed a style that often involves abstracting figurative imagery and has grown to include hand dyeing—one of the newer skills in her toolkit. She doesn’t feel confined to one way of working, stating that “sometimes, you use the technique that is called for to express what you’re trying to do for a certain piece.”
She admittedly prefers to move on after completing a series, which usually features a minimum of three and a maximum of seven pieces. “There are some artists who stay in the same series for 40 years,” she shared, “and I feel like I already did that with the pots.” Her national park quilts are the only exception, but she still doesn’t anticipate quilting all 63 sites.
Vicki especially takes pride in shying away from notions of precision and perfection in her quilting. “I think it’s really fun to take something that was a traditional medium like quilting and turn it into a more abstract form,” she said. Her quilt of the Grand Prismatic Spring, for example, began as Ohio Star blocks that were later cut into hundreds of pieces that she rearranged into a new work. Possessing a deep appreciation for color, Vicki often prefers working with solids and gradients, and she even paints fabrics to achieve the hues she’s looking for.
She also experiments with thread to create added depth and emphasis within her quilts. “I like a shiny embroidery, 40 weight thread that’s going to show up for my park quilts,” Vicki shared. “I usually use a finer thread, like a 50 weight, that’s more matte with my abstract work.” Freedom and experimentation are important facets of Vicki’s self-expression through art quilting, and she passes this approach along to her students. Her pro tip is to “take every class you can take. Even if everything isn’t for you, you have it in your toolbox, and you may pull it out sometime and need that technique for something in the future.”
Vicki stressed the importance of understanding the impacts of climate change and, as a result, the loss of species that is occurring in real time. While she is grateful that people find beauty within her quilts, she hopes that her work will invite others to reconsider public lands and the importance of the beautiful sites that have been set aside for future generations.
Sharbreon Plummer, PhD, began writing for Quiltfolk in 2021. She is an independent researcher, curator, and writer with 15 years of experience in the arts and culture sector. Her research focuses on textile traditions, artistic production, and folkways connected to Black life, especially within the South. She has facilitated and presented work at institutions such as Project Row Houses, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Rhode Island School of Design, Americans for the Arts, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Princeton University, and several others. Find more of her work on her website and her instagram.
