Joan Schulze

Schulze was named a “pioneer of the art quilt movement” by Constance Howard. Her work is in galleries and private collections worldwide, including the Renwick Gallery/Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, & the Oakland Museum of California.

• Name — Joan Schulze • Birthplace — Chicago, Illinois • Field — Fiber art, Quilt Art, Collage • Training — University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • Awards — Fresno Art Museum's Distinguished Woman Artist of 2017 • Website — joan-of-arts.com/

Schulze was born in Chicago, Illinois. During her high school years, Schulze was introduced to sewing in a home economics class that taught her how to fashion her own articles of clothing. After her graduation from Chicago's Lindblom Technical High School in 1954, Schulze went on to earn her bachelor's degree in education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1958. Immediately upon her graduation from college, Schulze began to work as an elementary school teacher.

Schulze relocated to California from Texas in 1966 and was inspired by the picturesque terrain that California offered. Schulze received no formal training and little art instruction. She began honing her sewing and embroidery skills through workshops in the Peninsula Stitchery Guild, as well as the Bay Area Arts and Crafts Guild, of which she became president in the mid-1970's. Schulze made her first quilt in 1974 after she was approached to teach an adult education class on quilt-making. Her first attempt at quilting came as an exercise of preparation to teach the class.

Throughout her career, Schulze has experimented with collage, fiber art, quilt-making, printmaking, dyeing, photography, painting, Xerox transfer, and digital technology. While she is best known for her contemporary quilt art, Schulze is a life-long collage artist. As a child, she would clip images from the Sears Roebuck catalog and save them for collages. Since then, Schulze continues to amass a supply of ephemera with the intention to implement these fragments in her work. Writer Sarah E. Tucker likens her tendency toward improvisation to that of a jazz musician. While film, point-and-shoot, and phone cameras have all served Schulze, she cites the photocopier as her “favorite and most important camera.” Starting in the mid 90's, Schulze began to create line drawings by making photocopies of stitched organza and printing these manipulated images onto silk, in what the artist refers to “toner drawings.”

• California II, 1979, 96 x 96” • No Sky in Manhattan, 1986, 90 x 79” • Tea Time at the Cloud Hotel, 1991, 78 x 73” • An American in Rotterdam, 1992, 70 x 52” • Finding the Golden Edges, 1994, 56 x 57.5” • Objects of Desire I, 1997, 44 x 38” • Red Letter Day (Scroll), 1998, 15.5 x 61” • Gateway Scrolls (Scroll), 1999, 72 x 24”, 96 x 24”, 120 x 24” • Fast... Faster..., 2001, 48 x 81” • Angel Drawings, 2003, 48 x 44” • Frameworks B, 2004, 14.5 x 18” • Tranquility, 2005, 15 x 17” • Water Lilies, 2006, 48 x 71” • Butterfly Logic, 2006, 46 x 44” • Promises, 2007, 44.25 x 54.5” • Women in Black, 2008, 29 x 50” • Visitors, 2009, 44 x 84” • What We Miss, 2010, 34.5 x 44.5” • Baring One’s Soul, 2013, 34.5 x 43.5” • Seven Bowls, 2015, 15 x 17” • Privileged Spaces, 2016, 42 x 52” • Opus (Center), 2016, 94 x 134” • The Unknowable Future, 2017, 48 x 64.5” • Eye, 2018, 16.5 x 21”

• Tsinghua University Art Museum, Beijing, China, 2018 • Celebrating 80, Fresno Art Museum, Fresno, California, 2017 - 2018 • Joan Schulze: Poetic License, Shenzhen University Art Gallery & Museum, Shenzhen, China, 2016 • Disappearing Conversations, Goodman 2 Art Building, San Francisco, California, 2015 • San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, Retrospective, San Jose, California, 2010 • iQuilt—iDraw, the original fiction of Joan Schulze, Ararat Regional Art Museum, Melbourne, Australia, 2007 • National Exhibition Centre, Festival of Quilts, Birmingham, England, 2005 • Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, Iowa, 2003 • Washington State University Art Museum, Pullman, Washington, 2001 • Joan Schulze: The New Haiku, One Hundred Collages, Andrea Schwartz Gallery, San Francisco, California, 2000 • Textilforum (The Danish Textile Museum), Herning, Denmark, 1999-2000 • Galerie Smend, Cologne, Germany, 1999 • Gayle Willson Gallery, Southampton, New York, 1981, 1983, 1987, 1999 • Smith Andersen Gallery, Palo Alto, California, 1993

• Quilt National, Dairy Barn Arts Center, Athens, Ohio, 2021, 2019, 2017, 2013, 2009, 2003 • International Fiber Art Biennale (Catalog & Juror), Tsinghua University Art Museum; Shenzhen Art Museum; Nantong, Jiangsu Province; Henan Art Museum, Suzhou University Art Museum, Shanghai Exhibition Hall, PR China, 2020, 2018, 2016, 2014, 2012, 2012, 2008, 2006, 2004 • International Fiber Arts (IX; VII), Sebastopol Center for the Arts, California, 2019, 2016 • 4th Riga International Textiles & Fibre Triennial: TRADITION & INNOVATION, Museum of Decorative Arts & Design, Riga, Latvia, 2010 • 12 Voices, Dennos Museum Center, Michigan, 2009 • Connecting Cultures and Colors, First Kyrgyz-American Quilt Exhibit, United States Embassy (Catalog), Kyrgyz Republic, 2006 • Biennale Internazionale Dell’ARTE Contemporanea, Fortezza da Basso (Catalog), Florence, Italy, 2005 • SAMPLE Exhibition (Catalog; Traveling through 2004 to: Williamson Art Gallery; Dutch Textile Museum; Hall Place, Kent), United Kingdom & Netherlands, 2003

• Renwick Gallery/Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC • Oakland Museum of California, California • San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, California • International Quilt Study Center & Museum, Nebraska • National Quilt Museum, Paducah, Kentucky • Musée ArtColle, Sergines, France • Museo de Collage, Morelos, México • Museum of Arts & Design, New York • Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin • Puke Ariki Museum, New Plymouth, New Zealand

• Stanford University, Palo Alto, California • Luther College (Iowa), Decorah • VISA International, San Francisco, California • Adobe Systems, Inc., San Jose, California • Queen of Apostles Catholic Church, San Jose, California • U. S. Embassy, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia • Isle of Daiichi Chapel, Japan • Kaiser Permanente, San Jose, Santa Clara, CA; Denver, CO • Palo Alto Medical Foundation, Burlingame, Fremont, & Mountain View, CA • John M. Walsh III Collection of Contemporary Art Quilts, New York