Patchwork Art Of Rosie Lee Tompkins At Washington Museum

Organized by the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, “Something Pertaining to God” features 40 quilted objects—including 15 large quilts, clothing, chair covers and pillowcases—by this acclaimed California artist. Included are rare signed works. The works are on loan from Eli Leon, who was a friend of Ms. Tompkins, and the foremost collector of her work. A full-color publication written by Mr. Leon accompanies the exhibition.

Tompkins was a deeply religious woman who believed she was an instrument of God and whose intense, abstract quilt designs were inspired by prayer. She was also very private: Rosie Lee Tompkins is a pseudonym for her given name, Effie Mae Howard. At the time of her death in December 2006, only a handful of people knew her true identity.

Tompkins was born in rural Arkansas and was one of 15 children. Her mother taught her the art of quilting using scraps of cloth. Tompkins moved to northern California as an adult, pursuing a career in nursing, and where she raised five children and stepchildren.

Following a nervous breakdown in 1970, she returned to quilting, finding solace in needlework and prayer, both of which found their way into her quilts, infusing them with a rare spirituality.

“Tompkins’s relationship to her art was both deep and spiritual; she arrived at her designs through a process of prayer and envisioning family members. Religious themes and iconography permeate many of her quilts. Like many visionary and self-taught artists, she often ascribed her work as the product of a higher, outside power,” says Jordana Pomeroy, NMWA senior curator.

Tompkins herself said of the quilting process: “The reason it makes me feel so good is that I put Christ in the center of it.” Looking at a quilt, she said: “I wonder how I did that! It was the Lord that helped me.”

Her use of improvisational piecing, extraordinarily vivid color, and radical geometric forms make her art among the most adventurous of the contemporary quilt genre. She incorporated unconventional materials in her work, such as denim, satin, rayon and velvet. Tompkins’ quilts incorporate symbolic strategies and when asked why she chose to position two red triangles near the center of a particular quilt she replied, “I’m thinking of something special when I do that, You know, something pertaining to God.”

Tompkins found fame late in life, much to her surprise and discomfort. Her quilts were featured in the 2001 Whitney Biennial, where they attracted much attention. A year later, Roberta Smith of The New York Times reviewed her monographic exhibition at the Peter Blum Gallery in Soho, calling her quilts: “Unerring and intuitive in their sense of color, shape, and scale…formidably joyful visual events that ignore the usual boundaries between cultures.”

Tompkins has had solo exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum and the Mills College Museum of Art in California, and her work has been included in exhibitions at major museums including the High Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

“Something Pertaining to God”: The Patchwork Art of Rosie Lee Tompkins is organized by the Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont. -- www.nmwa.org