JoAnn Deck's art quilts are not the heirlooms family members pass down through generations, but brightly colored abstract fiber collages.
"I'm not a person to work on a quilt for years. I like immediate results, to put my colors together and get the thing up on the wall," said Deck, 67, of Plainfield.
"Color excites me, big, bright swashes of color, not little prints and little designs. I'm more into futuristic stuff. I'm not into history and I think it carries over into art."
Having once owned a Harvard, Ill., fabric store, where Deck also taught quilting classes, Deck was familiar with fabrics when she discovered art quilts on the Internet.
Already a collage artist, Deck was excited about the possibilities of creating art on fabric, art that also did not require framing. Deck took a class and was instantly pleased with the results.
"I can create different lines and shapes just by the way I apply the dyes and the paints to the fabric and the way it travels through the fibers," Deck said. "Then there's the tactile nature. If you have a quilt hanging, people want to touch it. But if too many people touch it, they leave oil from their hands on the surface and that's not good for a piece of art."
Deck says she works intuitively, rarely sketching a first design before she begins. Nor is she afraid of experimenting with either color or fabric. She will often just throw paint on cloth just to see what happens. The paint that is available for fabric work is better than ever, she said.
"There are new and wonderful textile paints that do not change the hand of the fabric significantly," Deck said. "The cloth created with these paints, when used according to manufacturers directions, is so soft that you can easily hand-quilt it. For many years, acrylic paints were applied to fabric and, even though marketed specifically for fabric, left it stiff and rubbery."
Although she sometimes melts polyesters using a special gun, Deck nearly always prefers working with 100 percent cotton fabrics. To ensure just the right colors for her projects, she hand dyes and hand paints her work.
"I don't want to limit my choices," Deck said. "I love being able to have the right color I want on hand and not having to run out to the store to find it. I believe God has blessed me with a keen sensitivity to color harmonies, along with the ability to combine many diverse and unusual elements and techniques. My art pieces are built layer upon layer, technique upon technique, with intuitive and spontaneous development fueled by the colors and diversity of materials."
The art experience for Deck does not stop with creating art. Teaching it to others, she said, is a natural consequence of experiencing it.
For the last six years, Deck has taught a number of art-related courses at TLD Designs in Westmont, owned by her daughter and textile artist Tammy Deck.
Deck also accepts commission work; her pieces hang as part of many private and corporate collections, she said. Nearly everything Deck owns is or can be for sale if the right buyer comes along. There is, however, one piece she will not sell.
"It's a collage I did many years ago as a tribute to my stepmother when she died. It helped me get through the grieving," Deck said. "It's not a fabric collage, but a dimensional collage from things that were hers: a piece of her watch, the mirror from inside her lipstick container and her Washburn School graduation paper.
"I've exhibited it on occasion and for awhile I taught classes on how to make one.
"I told people, 'You bring your important stuff and I'll show you how to make a piece of art out of it.' But people want results that are vintage-looking and vintage isn't my thing."
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