quilts
* i am reposting this story i wrote about my mother’s quilts a few years ago, in preparation for one of her shows to explain her design process. i am so excited for you all to see what she is sharing at our pop-up on october 17th x0x
Read More
hi friends! it has been so amazing to be back in my home state of california and i am thrilled about relaunching my interior design business here. to celebrate, we are hosting a pop-up art show featuring:
* the paintings of sarah kinn, a dear friend and boulder based artist whose bright, colorful pieces are all over my house as well as in the homes of many of my colorado clients. she is coming out to berkeley to paint and create in the california sunshine and to share her work at our pop-up. a few of her gorgeous paintings…
Read More
(floating, 2021 by ann rhode, 80W x 84L”)
ann created “floating” in another attempt to reduce her scrap bag. the printed strips were all leftovers from other quilts. she estimates over 200 different fabrics were used, which gives a sense of the incredible size of her fabric collection. the scraps were organized by width and then arranged with the lightest value prints at the top and increasing to the darkest at the bottom. the horizontal solid strips were appliquéd in place after.
floating is is machine pieced and machine quilted. fabrics and batting are all cotton.
Read More
(flower power, 20XX by ann rhode, 62W x 62L”)
ann created “flower power” to showcase her collection of big floral prints. when designing it, she felt it needed the darker verticals with the thin strips to give some structure to the piece and to encourage the feeling of dappled light peeking through. the wider horizontal strips provide tranquil pathways across the lighter triangles.
this piece did not end up making much of a dent in her big print floral collection!
flower power is machine pieced and machine quilted. fabrics and batting are all cotton.
Read More
(teapots, 2019 by ann rhode 54W x 54L”)
for ann rhode, designing a quilt often begins with a geometric challenge. in creating tea pots, she originally wanted to make a one block quilt with curved seams. ultimately, she needed two blocks to make it pleasing. the emergence of the tea pot was a surprise!
ann used japanese yukata fabrics to build the tea pots, supported by solid fabrics and other small prints. the warm background fabrics offset the deeper blues, greens and reds of the tea pots. 100% cotton fabrics and batting were used. the quilt is both machine pieced and quilted.
contact jennifer@jenniferrhode.com for pricing information. to see the full array of quilts avallable for purchase click here.
Read More
(this quilt has been hanging in my bedroom for over twenty years… i LOVE it! x0x0)
one of the BEST things about moving back to california is being near my parents. it is so easy to pop over to their house and see what they are up to. most of the time, my mother is in her studio working on a quilt or three. i love to watch her process and i also love having her work hanging throughout my house. her quilts are more like fabric paintings in her use of color and the way she upends traditional patterns and reconfigures them or creates original blocks. her quilts add warmth, texture, color and dimension to my house and now you could have one in your home as well! i will be featuring a different quilt each month. contact me if you are interested in more information: jennifer@jenniferrhode.com the full collection is on view here.
Read More
the summer before my lucy started middle school she wanted to buy new school clothes. in the past, i typically just dipped into the girls’ section on a target run and picked up dresses and leggings and tees in bright colors that featured unicorns, rainbows, hearts and glitter. i loved selecting happy outfits for her and she was always delighted with what i brought home. this time, however, she wanted to come along and weigh in on everything. at first i thought it might be fun.
Read More
(my mother’s high school senior portrait)
my mother is a study of contradictions. she grew up on a farm in the very small town of atlantic, iowa. she embraced the no-nonsense, stiff upper lip, super kind, mid-western values (AND the comfort food, which i grew up with) but always felt misplaced on a farm. she did not enjoy collecting eggs at the crack of dawn - she says the hens were ruthless and would pinch the backs of her hands and twist her skin… i have to ask her why she didn’t wear gloves - or get particularly attached to her 4H cow (who she showed in penny loafers, not work boots) or adopt a runty pig like fern that she bottle fed and doted on. no - she moved to the “big city” of minneapolis straight away after college and started working in fashion. she preferred urban sidewalks (where she could wear pretty shoes) and buses to fields and tractors. she was thrilled that her job as a junior buyer for dayton’s department store took her on regular trips to new york where she could soak in the energy and art and architecture and bagels (which she’d never had before) of the biggest, most exciting city in the country.
Read More
the pandemic era presented us all with a multitude of challenges and stressors and dark moments, but there WERE some beautiful, uplifting events and one of my favorites was the opening of boulder’s newest home shop, wildflower nation supply. i am so grateful for the moxie and vision of elizabeth prentiss and erica simon in creating this absolute jewel box of a destination. my heart sings with joy each time i visit as there are so many treasures to discover in their shop with the big porch on 17th street right off of pearl.
Read More
i am so excited that a piece i wrote about using textiles as wall art is the cover story for boulder county home + garden magazine’s fall-winter issue. THANK YOU to heather knierim of HBK photography for the beautiful photos, to my clients for allowing me to share these projects and st. frank and the super talented fiber artists: my mother, aysun and aysel demir of wallknot and designs by filia for their creations.
(*the editor did add two artists to the article - the first and last projects included in the story are not my projects.)
twenty-seven years ago, in 1991, my mother was infuriated by the clarence thomas/anita hill sexual harassment hearings. she kept the TV on as she worked in her studio and was struck by how a panel of old, white, male senators aggressively and ruthlessly interrogated the poised, young attorney, anita hill, questioning both her integrity and character.
Read More
i don’t know what factors came together to produce such an enormous bounty of fruit on my farm (i.e. my backyard) but the output has been tremendous. i decided to have a couple of neighborhood harvest parties so that i could get some help picking all the apples and then the plums that ripened a few weeks later. i thought i could pull off a tom sawyer “painting the fence” caper and make my friends think it would be FUN to harvest with me. i would provide snacks and drinks and my neighbors could do the labor. i was imagining something like the barn raising parties they used to have on little house on the prairie. pa would be out there entertaining everyone on his fiddle (i could play macklemore on my sonos), ma would would lay out cornbread, fresh, grilled deer meat and homemade pies (i made a run to trader joes), the children would be running around (i have a couple of those) and the grown ups would build a barn (the neighbors would pick my apple tree and plum bush clean) so i wouldn’t have to gather up any more rotten fruit or worry about the bears coming into my yard and leaving giant poops or mauling us.
Read More
my mother, ann rhode, is the rare artist who primarily approaches her creativity with logic, rather than emotion. she is a problem solver who revels in puzzles and mazes and geometric explorations. she frequently alters traditional or established quilt blocks to construct new patterns and pathways for the eye to follow. she creates movement and depth in her quilts by varying color value or combining unexpected prints and hues. her pieces are both mathematical challenges and painterly in her color use.
Read More
around the time that my younger brother started kindergarten, my mother decided she needed a creative outlet of her own, beyond meatloaf and bedtime stories. i remember coming home to find the downstairs bathtub filled with long, skinny sticks soaking in water to soften them so my mother could make baskets. there was also the collage period when the dining room table was covered in colored bits of paper from my mother’s art class. eventually, she volunteered to help make a raffle quilt to raise money for our elementary school. and that, i think, sealed the deal.
Read More