Every artist must find a voice that feels true and strong. Paula Nadelstern (b. 1951) found hers early in her career as a quilt artist, inspired by a bolt of sensuous and beautiful Liberty of London fabric. The bilateral symmetry of the design was an epiphany that stirred Nadelstern’s imagination and that has yielded a seemingly infinite vein of creative expression for more than twenty years. Focusing first on the kaleidoscopic quality in the symmetry, Nadelstern innovated new techniques and developed a highly refined, intricate, and distinctive personal aesthetic. The incorporation of related crystalline forms, notably snowflakes, has continued to lead Nadelstern through an artistic evolution that has encompassed science, history, innovation, and tradition. Each composition offers a fresh revelation of the complexities inherent in Nadelstern’s labor-intensive approach. Minute pieces of fabric are joined like slivers of colored glass into a magical whole, the masterful manipulations of color and pattern resulting in scintillating wheels, shifting ellipses, and other movements across the surfaces of the textiles. The hard-edged, fractal structure of snowflake and kaleidoscopic images might seem inimical to the seductive softness of a quilt, but in Paula Nadelstern’s singular quilt idiom, this provocative tension erases the historical divide between art and quilt.

Stacy C. Hollander, curator

Online exhibition catalog

Related Book
Paula Nadelstern’s Kaleidoscope Quilts: An Artist’s Journey Continues
By Paula Nadelstern. C&T Publishing, 2008. 128 pages. Available at the museum shop.

• PBS video of the exhibition installed at the Akron Art Museum.
• Conversation between quilt artist Bonnie Lyn McCaffery and Paula Nadelstern
• Paula Nadelstern’s WNYC interview footage
• Serena Altschul’s CBS News Sunday Morning segment on kaleidoscopes, featuring the exhibition
• Tour of the exhibition by eQuilter.com

Museum exhibitions are supported in part by the Leir Charitable Foundations in memory of Henry J. & Erna D. Leir, the Gerard C. Wertkin Exhibition Fund, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. Additional support is provided by C&T Publishing, Inc., eQuilter.com, and Minia and Norman Sas.