Mary Vaneecke
Mary Vaneecke is a textile artist, teacher, author, and founder of The Mourning Project
Category: Artist/Individual
Discipline: Visual arts
Program Affiliations: Arts Foundation Grantees
About Mary Vaneecke
Mary Vaneecke is an award-winning artist, author, and teacher. Her mixed media art on textiles has been exhibited in museums and at regional and national shows throughout the US, in Europe and Australia. Her work and articles have appeared in many publications, including the LA Times, Quilting Arts Magazine, Machine Quilting Unlimited, the Studio Art Quilt Associates’ Journal, and The Quilting Quarterly.
Vaneecke began her art career with a round-robin quilting project in 1999. That quilt is still in pieces, but it inspired her to open El Sol Quilting Studio five years later. In 2010, her work Homage won the American Quilters Society’s Longarm Workmanship Award. Most recently, she founded a huge community art project to collect 20,000+ pairs of handmade baby booties to draw attention to the US infant mortality rate, which is the highest in the developed world. The first complete installation was at Children's Memorial Park held in Tucson in 2023.
Mary Vaneecke
Preferred Pronouns: she/her
mary@maryvaneecke.com
520-444-7149
https://maryvaneecke.com/
See the arial drone photography of the first complete installation of 20,000 baby booties
The Mourning Project, complete installation, October 2023, Tucson Arizona.
The Mourning Project is a memorial, a community art project, and a call to action. The makers of the 20,000+ baby booties seek to honor the loss of each American child lost before their first birthday each year, raise awareness of the problem, and start a conversation about the solutions to preventable infant mortality in the US. This country has the worst infant mortality rate in the developed world.
Riding the Waves, 2020, 30'' by 60''
Riding the Waves
Made in summer of 2020, this work is created from four two-yard lengths of silk organza. Each piece of fabric has up to 6 processes on it–dyeing, scouring, removing color and over-dyeing using an itajime shibori method. Diamond cutouts float on top of the ‘waves.’ Fabrics are layered to partially reveal the fabric underneath. Layered and machine stitched.
Two Boyfriends, 2023, 36'' x 20''
Two Boyfriends
From the series 'Where Do We Go From Here?' Hand-dyed silks (itajime and machine Katano shibori method) , layered on fabric and hand stitched. Two pieces of 'boyfriend' fabrics--favorites that the dyer is reluctant to cut/use--are used.
