Denise Labadie
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Biography
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Denise has a profound love of the Irish landscape, a theme that is central to her quilting.
She grew up in a large family in the San Francisco Bay Area and presently lives in the country, a few miles north of Boulder, Colorado, with her husband and son. Her studio overlooks the intensely colored Colorado skies, and the peace of the beautiful foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Walking, biking, and camping are some of the activities she enjoys in the area.
For strength and inspiration she draws on the closeness of her family and her love of nature. Irish landscapes - with their breathtaking megalithic stones - have been the leading theme in her art. As often as possible she goes stone hunting in Ireland to befriend "new" stone circles, dolmens, old monasteries and churches, forgotten cemeteries with magnificent head stones, and beautifully carved Celtic crosses.
Denise has been juried into various shows such as Artist as Quiltmaker, Art Quilts at the Whistler, Sacred Threads and others. At the Alegre Retreats in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she has taken two awards, including best of show.
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Statement
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I am an artist and my medium is fiber. I make art quilts.
My quilts are most typically images of Irish megalithic stones and landscapes - dolmens, cairns, burial chambers, stone circles, standing stones, ancient stone churches, gravestones, and the like. I love the magic of the stones and all the associated questions of why they were built and what stories they were meant to tell. Irish "stone hunting" is also a great excuse for having to make repeated trips back to my family's ancestral homeland.
To best honor these ancient icons, and to express the moods and textures inherent in these complex landscapes, I use a wide variety of colors, fabrics, and threads. I custom hand-paint and quilt each stone to achieve the most realistic look possible, whereas the more abstract landscapes are developed using a stripping technique that uniquely mimics the intimacy, shadowing, and tones and hues so common to Irish vistas.
I also make commissioned quilts of other people's sacred locations.
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Exhibitions
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Juried Exhibitions
2003 Landscape Unlimited: Interpretations of Nature, Chicago, IL
2003 Open Studios Art Walk Tour, Boulder, CO
2003 Sacred Threads, Reynoldsburg, OH
2002 Open Studios Art Walk Tour, Boulder, CO
2002 Art Quilts at the Whistler, Whistler House Museum of Art, Lowell, MA
2002 The Artist as Quiltmaker, Firelands Association for the Visual Arts, Oberlin, OH
2001 Sacred Threads, Reynoldsburg, OH
2001 Landscape of Contemporary Quilting 2, Denver International Airport, Denver, Colorado
1999 Landscape of Contemporary Quilting, Denver International Airport, Denver, Colorado
1999 Smallworks, Front Range Contemporary Quilters, Boulder Public Library, Boulder, Colorado, and traveling
1999 Southwest Tapestry and Front Range Contemporary Quilters, Foothills Gallery, Golden, Colorado
Solo Invitational Exhibitions
2000 "Irish Stones and More", New Pieces Gallery, Berkeley, CA
2000 Solo Show, Office of Doctor Vincent Cleeves, Boulder, CO
Invitational Exhibitions
2004 Sacred Threads, Dallas Quilt Celebration 2004, Dallas, TX
2004 Alegre Retreat Professional Art Show, Santa Fe, NM
2003 Alegre Retreat Professional Art Show, Santa Fe, NM
2002 Potluck, Longmont Museum & Cultural Center, Longmont, CO and traveling
2000 Fifty-Third Central City Arts Annual, Central City, CO
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