YARDS Projects Celebrates the Modern Quilt

Quilting the Commons highlights the creative energy of the Northeast Ohio Modern Quilt Guild (NEOMQG), a grassroots collective founded in 2016 as part of the Modern Quilt Guild. Modern quilting emphasizes innovation, bold design, and improvisation—often favoring solid fabrics over traditional patterns—and increasingly serves as a platform for personal expression and social commentary.

Through monthly workshops, retreats, and collaborations with organizations like Praxis Fiber Workshop and BAYarts, NEOMQG fosters a culture of shared learning and creative exchange. Members support one another in developing new techniques while contributing to a broader dialogue within contemporary craft. Many also participate in QuiltCon, the field’s leading international exhibition.

This exhibition presents quilting as a dynamic contemporary art form rooted in collaboration, experimentation, and care. The works reflect not only individual vision but also the collective spirit of making—where skills are passed down, ideas evolve, and community sustains creativity. In quilting, craft becomes a powerful intersection of art, connection, and belonging.

Pieces of Knowing brings together the work of artists whose practices embrace the unexpected and improvisational. Through collage, paint, and metal, they layer fragments, textures, and gestures guided less by rigid planning and more by a deep trust in intuition. The resulting works invite viewers to see decision-making not as a linear process, but as a conversation—between material and maker, thought and instinct, past and present. Featured are Clare Murray Adams, Robert Brisley, Kelly Dietrick, Patty Flauto, Marti Higgins, John T. Howitt, Mary Platz Hughes, Lisa Kenion, Jennifer Price, and Mindy Tousley.

YARDS PROJECT SPACE
AT WORTHINGTON YARDS
725 Johnson Court
Cleveland, Ohio 44113
yardsproject.com

John Saile: New prints and paintings See Me…See Yourself are portrait-based works that merge personal observation with the visual language of Pop and Op Art. Drawing inspiration from Roy Lichtenstein, the work explores the use of Ben Day-inspired dot patterns, reinterpreted through contemporary tools such as photography, AI, and digital drawing platforms. Limiting the palette to cyan, magenta, yellow and key (CMYK), the artist constructs images through variations in dot size and placement, allowing color and value to emerge through optical interaction.

These portraits function as both representations of known individuals and reflective surfaces for viewers, prompting questions about perception and self-image. In select works, reflective materials such as silver mylar incorporate the viewer into the composition, blurring boundaries between subject and audience. The result is an evolving series of Pop-inflected portraits that balance technical precision with an exploration of identity, perception, and presence.

TINNERMAN LOFTS PROJECT SPACE
2048 Fulton Road
Cleveland, Ohio 44113

EVENTS:

Quilting the Commons, April 30–July 11 at Worthington Yards

Pieces of Knowing, July 23–September 12 at Worthington Yards

John Saile: New prints and paintings See Me…See Yourself, May 28–September 5 at Tinnerman Lofts