RAE
HELLER
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2023-Present
What began as a craft to make for new life in this world became a pathway for processing grief. I find this duality– celebrating life and processing death – in the durable softness of creating quilts. The process of making bright large quilts is a balm: I create slowly from repurposed fabric, and work as large as the piece requires, unconstrained by a canvas dimension. Working with the more saturated and vibrant colors of fabric grounds me in the present and on what is important and tender. In a world becoming more complicated and difficult to bear, not less, I follow where the sadness and joy lead.
September 2023, 78" x 78", cotton fabric and thread, hand quilted
A Repeated Prayer is a part of a series of quilts on grief. After the complex and unresolved death of a friend, the precise and deliberate work of quilting naturally lent itself as a conduit to process grief. The outside edge is made of approximately 1700 1.25” squares. To create the gradation, I pieced each square one at a time, no shortcuts involved. This quilt is a meditation on devotion, aliveness, and the process that is grief. In art and life, things take as long as they take.
May 2023, 77" x 77", cotton fabric and thread, hand quilted
It is so painful to feel alive when a loved one is gone. There is such sorrow and joy of remembering loved ones. To Feel Alive tries to capture the immense and expanded pain and aliveness a grieving body can hold.
February 2023, 74" x 57", cotton fabric and thread, long arm machine quilted
Inner knowing and at-home-ness are the themes behind this piece. This quilt symbolizes both the challenging intention to carve space for the self and also the joy found in moments of discernment, the gold in realizing what our body already knows to be true.
March 2024, ~75" x 75", cotton fabric and thread, long arm machine quilted
Metal is the element of precision, and also of letting go, grief, and transformation. The deliberate fabric piecing of Alchemy of a Spirit helped me continue to process my grief, alchemizing the relationship I have with my beloved friend’s spirit. I also noticed a difference in my own spirit; I could finally invite my friend into my studio space. Just as alchemy can occur in both physical and metaphysical forms, so too can quilts hold both a body and spirit. The tiny triangles resemble butterflies and also hourglasses, liberation and time.
December 2023, 77" x 77", cotton fabric and thread, hand and machine quilted
Tender Heart is a reminder to hold myself, and all that comes with grieving and loss, with grace and tenderness.
June 2024, 90” x 90”, cotton fabric, long arm machine quilted
This piece holds grief, the invitation of loved ones no longer here into my studio space, the question of motherhood, and ultimately, transformation. There is so much uncertainty. And, when I create, I feel very sure about what is right in front of me. I love that this process holds the duality of a question and the knowing response, and also opportunities to be bold in my knowing. The moment we decide to use neon yellow thread, and I feel unsure about it at first because it’s neon yellow, and then say “actually I am sure” and something shifts.
May 2024, 66” x 66”, cotton fabric, hand quilted
“Just a Quilt” is about contemporary craft liberation.
People have asked “are you now a textile artist?” An artist saw my work and critiqued “these are just quilts.” I am an artist and I continue to make quilts because they offer something canvases never could: I work unconstrained by a canvas size, using accessible and repurposed materials, and gain clarity through physically interacting with my art.
Quilting has been a transformational art practice: I shape a material and the material shapes me. Quilts live in the queerness of a medium that is multiple things at once, fine art and contemporary craft and mental health care and community care, and also none of those things at all, “just” a quilt.