In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with Quilter/Textile Artist Lorraine Woodruff-Long.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
In this episode Emily features Lorraine Woodruff-Long, a textile artist from San Francisco who turned to quilting after losing her job during the pandemic. Lorraine's work, rich in cultural heritage and social commentary, gained recognition when her piece was featured in the deYoung Open. She discusses her inspiration, including the iconic 'Quilts of Gee's Bend,' her use of text in quilts, and her focus on issues like gun violence and climate change. Lorraine's journey to becoming a quilter and her passion for teaching are also highlighted. Lorraine also shares her thoughts on being an artist, influential works, and her favorite creative spot in San Francisco.
About Artist Lorraine Woodruff-Long:
Lorraine Woodruff-Long is a self-taught San Francisco quilter with a primary focus on color, improvisation, and recycled/repurposed fabrics.
Raised in Houston, and educated at University of Texas/Austin, Lorraine served in Peace Corps Kenya and afterwards moved to California as a “bucket list” dream to temporarily experience living in a progressive urban city. She fell in love with San Francisco and never left. After a career in marketing and advertising, Lorraine later worked in the nonprofit sector while raising two city kids with her architect husband before spring boarding into a fiber art practice prompted by the pandemic.
Lorraine’s work has been juried into art exhibitions at the de Young Museum/San Francisco, the California Heritage Museum/Santa Monica, the Sanchez Art Center/Pacifica, Muzeo Museum & Cultural Center/Anaheim, TAG Gallery/Los Angeles the Drawing Room/San Francisco, and the San Francisco Women Artists Network Gallery. She has received numerous awards for her quilts at local, national and international quilt shows. Quilt exhibitions include the International Quilt Festival/Houston, QuiltCon, the Pacific International Quilt Festival, Visions in Cloth, and Quilt San Francisco among others.
Lorraine is a member of the Modern Quilt Guild, San Francisco Quilt Guild, Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA), East Bay Heritage Quilters, ArtSpanSF, Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art, and a volunteer with the Social Justice Sewing Academy Remembrance Project. Her work is included in the 2021 book, “Stitching Stolen Lives: The Social Justice Sewing Academy Remembrance Project.”
She currently teaches quilting at City College of San Francisco Extension and SCRAP-SF and teaches quilting workshops online and to guilds around the country.
Visit Lorraine's Website: QuiltingInTheFog.com
Follow Lorraine on Instagram: @QuiltingInTheFog
And for more on Lorraine's Exhibit at St Joseph's Arts Society, CLICK HERE.
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About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
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CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
2024-1203 - AIA - EP039 - Lorraine Woodruff Long
Host Emily Wilson: [00:00:00] Art is Awesome can now be heard on KSFP 102. 5 FM every Friday at 9am and 7pm. Please follow the show and rate us wherever you get your podcast media. If you like what you hear from today's artist, you can find links and information about them in our show notes.
Artist Lorraine Woodruff Long: I saw that, and I thought this is so exciting.
I love what these women are doing. I loved what it was with their culture, with their heritage, and it was art, and it was so beautiful. And it really got me like this bubbly excited feeling like this is what I want to do with quiltings.
Host Emily Wilson: That's Lorraine Woodruff Long. This week's guest on Art is Awesome.
I'm your host, Emily Wilson. I'm a writer in San Francisco, often covering the arts, and I've been meeting such great people that I created this [00:01:00] bi weekly podcast to highlight their work. During the pandemic, Lorraine Wood, if long, lost her job. and dove into quilting, which she'd been doing for years when she could find some time.
In 2020, she got a piece in the first deYoung Open where artists were selected from the nine Bay Area counties and had their work shown at the museum. Since then, her quilts have been included in many exhibitions and she's won awards at quilt shows. Lorraine's quilts are currently in a show, Packing and Cracking.
It's up through December 16th at St. Joseph's Art Society in San Francisco. We met at Lorraine's house where she works out of her garage. We talked about her using data and text in her work and about how seeing the acclaimed show, The Quilts of Gee's Bend, and moving from Texas to California. [00:02:00]
Artist Lorraine Woodruff Long: I thought I would go back and die there, but I went to the Peace Corps, um, traveled around the world for like a year and then I'd had this list of things I wanted to do. One of which was living in an urban area, like living in an urban city. My mom's family's from California way back. Actually, San Francisco way back.
So I thought, okay, well, I'll come try it out and live in here. And then, Okay. Never wanted to leave. There was no reason to go back to Texas. And so I've been here almost 40 years, love it, and I'm very happy I made the move.
Host Emily Wilson: Lorraine grew up playing the flute and the piccolo. She thought of herself as a musician, not a visual artist. At school fundraisers, She saw quilts friends had made.
Artist Lorraine Woodruff Long: I thought, gosh, that looks so fun, it looks so hard. It was about the time that, you know, the internet came up, and you could go on Flickr, and people were making blogs and stuff, and you could learn anything online. It's even more so now, of course. And so I started, you know, taking my family's clothing and making things, and I also started [00:03:00] doing things for the kids auctions. I started making things for my own family. I've been doing that probably almost 20 years.
Host Emily Wilson: An acclaimed show made by four generations of Black women in Alabama that Lorraine saw at a San Francisco museum made a big difference.
Artist Lorraine Woodruff Long: The big turning point for me was at the DeYoung. They had the Quilts of Gee’s Bend.
I saw that and I thought this, this is so exciting. I love what these women are doing. I loved what it was with their culture, with their heritage, with repurposed clothing. And it was art and it was so beautiful and it really got me like this bubbly excited feeling like this is what I want to do with quiltings.
Host Emily Wilson: After working at a demanding job all day Lorraine would make time to quilt.
Artist Lorraine Woodruff Long: I would just come home and I'd make sure I did something for 15 minutes every day down in the garage because that's where I could make a mess down in the garage and leave it and then I would really just quilt all weekend long like literally 10 hours a day.
It was so fulfilling and so creative and so fun. Then [00:04:00] the pandemic hit. I lost my job and was kind of devastated about it. I didn't know what I was going to do. It was, yeah, I was turning 60 that year. So it was a whole lot wrapped up in there. So I thought, well, I kind of secretly, it would be fun thinking it was just going to be for a couple of months before I went back to an intense job, and I just quilted like crazy.
Host Emily Wilson: In 2020, the DeYoung Museum held an open submission to showcase artists from the nine Bay Area counties, Loraine was one of the artists picked to be in the show. It made a huge difference, she says.
Artist Lorraine Woodruff Long: I had a piece that was in the de Young Open. First of all, that it got accepted as a fiber piece in a quilt was really a huge boost to my confidence in what I was creating. It was something I designed and created and it sold from there. I just started having a lot more people interested in my work and also started teaching. So really the pandemic kicked it off for me on so many fronts.
Host Emily Wilson: At first, Lorraine thought the de Young [00:05:00] Open was just online.
Artist Lorraine Woodruff Long: Later, I realized, you know, what 12, 000. entrants in there and they guess they selected about 800 and what was most surprising is that first of all I'm so grateful that the de Young really values fabric and textile art They had I don't know maybe 12 to 15 of the 800 pieces that were in it were Quilts and Quilters and Fiber Art.
So we were just so, all so thrilled. Of course, we all, almost all of us know each other. And we're so thrilled that that had happened. But that, that it, that my piece was selected by the curators there. It was, it was curated so beautifully. It was a very colorful piece of mine. And it was in this one room that everything was just color, color, color.
It just was so stimulating to see where it was put, but also just the art of all the other Bay Area artists. I was just so grateful that everybody got their own website page and people could contact you directly about purchasing it. We got 100 percent of the proceeds. I will be forever grateful.
Host Emily Wilson: [00:06:00] Lorraine often uses text in her quilts, like the ones at the show at St. Joseph's. She remembers seeing art with words on a trip after college with friends.
Artist Lorraine Woodruff Long: We went to the Pompidou and there was an Ed Ruscha exhibit. I just sort of loved the irony that he had. I don't know, just these texts that he Has on his pieces were just very memorable to me probably a couple, a decade or more later. I remember going to or being introduced to Barbara Kruger and her work at LACMA in LA and also her, you know, your body is, is a battleground, you know, it's a very famous I have two shirts with it now. A lot of this is down in, in Southern California at the Broad, a really wonderful Jenny Holzer collection where she was taking texts that she would create and she was, this whole wall that's papered with these texts that she wrote that, I don't know, I just find it, I'm a verbal person, um, but I loved the combination of that.
Host Emily Wilson: The signs at the 2017 Women's March inspired Lorraine. to use text [00:07:00]in her own work.
Artist Lorraine Woodruff Long: I remember I was so fascinated by the hilarious and clever and poignant protest signs people were making. I was taking pictures of all these signs and collecting them. So I kind of started collecting texts and memes. A couple of years later, it was clear what was happening in the path we were going down with women's rights.
And I started making, you know, quilts that were very pink. I also have this huge collection of crazy collection of doilies, that's another long story, but I started making very pink Femi quilts using, with these doilies, kind of the provocative, poignant texts that I had been collecting from these, these protest marches.
Host Emily Wilson: Lorraine has quilts in the Packing and Cracking Show at San Francisco's St. Joseph's Art Society. The one about gun violence sold on the first night.
Artist Lorraine Woodruff Long: I have a quilt that says the number of holes in this quilt are the number that can be shot by an assault rifle in the time it takes to read this, and in the time it takes to read [00:08:00] this, it's 10 seconds, and there's 42 holes that I've cut into it and embroidered.
I have a few more on the way about gun violence, but I just find, um, particularly with some of these things, it's not what you're expecting to see on a quilt. They've been pretty impactful. I've been pleased by the reactions people have had to them.
Host Emily Wilson: Lorraine also makes quilts showing the effects of climate change.
Artist Lorraine Woodruff Long: They're nice and square and big and usually, you know, you think about charts and things. Quilts are great ways to communicate those things. First one that I did on data during the pandemic. We're all locked up in our house and there's, in September, there was those terrible fires that were happening here.
And so, like a lot of people, I just became very obsessed with looking at what was the air quality happening that day. I started taking screenshots of what the air quality was in San Francisco from this site called Purple Air. I was doing this. Many times a day, but like from September to November of that year I started taking these screenshots and like a lot of artists or visual artists Everything starts looking like a quilt to me, but I started, you know [00:09:00] realizing that you know, the air color call quality index goes from bright green That's very healthy and good and it kind of goes in a scale from you know Yellow to orange to red to very very dark purple.
And so I thought I'm gonna make each San Francisco Screenshot that I took into a like a little four inch square of a quilt block
Host Emily Wilson: It meant a lot to Lorraine to be asked to do this show with other textile artists
Artist Lorraine Woodruff Long: I do come up a lot as political quilter in san francisco. So I was uh recommended and showed my work To Martin Strickland the new curator there. He actually selected my I have five favorite pieces to be in there, one about gun violence, another one about climate change that's called Quilt Melt, and three of my punchier abortion rights quilts that are pink with doilies.
Host Emily Wilson: Lorraine loves teaching quilting in San Francisco City College's Extension classes.
Artist Lorraine Woodruff Long: I did a proposal last fall. I [00:10:00] think my first time teaching this series. It's an 11-part series that's in two sections and it's sold out and I've and I what I didn't expect is those individuals would want to just take the same class over and over so they've all become friends and really become a community amongst themselves.
My biggest focus is improvisation. Like I'm not teaching you a pattern that I have and you're going to execute what it is. I teach techniques and I show you can make a whole quilt out of any one thing I might teach in a week or it could be one of the 10 things I'm going to teach you. Um, but what I love is just seeing what people do.
They take these ideas and what they do with it. And they, everybody makes something that's very much their own and they're excited about it. It's just wonderful to have something that you love to pour yourself into, and I don't think I ever imagined how much I would enjoy it. I really do love it. And I'm being asked to teach all over the country, and I'm, you know, now doing things on Zoom.
Host Emily Wilson: This is Three [00:11:00] Questions, the part of the show where I ask the guest the same three questions. The questions are When did you know you were an artist? What's some work that made an impression on you? And what's the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area?
Artist Lorraine Woodruff Long: I feel like I'm still struggling with that term. And it's more recently I think I'm embracing it. But I definitely think having a piece that was selected for the DeYoung Open when I just had no expectations at all was the beginning of me thinking, Oh, oh maybe what I'm doing is really, is really something.
Definitely at the DeYoung, the Quilts of Gee's Bend, I think it was in 2006, just rocked my world and I, I just saw quilting in a whole new way and I loved the women that were in that and were involved in it, what they've done. I mean, they're icons to modern quilters.[00:12:00]
Well, I've really found lately that I solve a lot of problems and I come up with ideas when I'm Exercising or walking and my favorite place in San Francisco is Chrissy Field and just walking there and in the open air and it's so San Francisco and you, you see the Golden Gate Bridge there and whatever the weather is, it's just spectacular.
I feel like walking there, things come to me and I'm able to solve creative problems I'm working on and I, it's just makes me also so happy to be living here in San Francisco.
Host Emily Wilson: Thank you so much to Lorraine Woodruff Long, our guest today. You can see her work as well as other textile artists. At Packing and Cracking at St. Joseph's Art Society. It's up through December 16th. And thank you for listening to Art is [00:13:00] Awesome. Please follow the show, leave a rating, and join us next time to hear from Carrie Ann Plank.
She has a solo show, Cacophony, using printmaking to visually represent sound. At Jonathan Carver Moore, a gallery on Market Street in San Francisco.
Art is Awesome is a bi weekly podcast coming out every other Tuesday. It's created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited by Charlene Gotu of Gotu Productions. It's carried on KSFP LP 102. 5 FM San Francisco on Fridays. At 9am and 7pm. Our theme music is provided by Kevin MacLeod with Incompetech Music.
Be sure and follow us on Instagram at Art is Awesome [00:14:00] Podcast or visit our website. Till next time.