Bio

Andrea Finch creates sculptural quilts of botanical subjects, realistic to abstract, exploring textile textures. Her botanical obsession began with 2 decades of photographing and creating an arboretum in her yard while working at a local garden center. She has come to quilt-making from a different angle, allowing the fabric to speak through texture, color, and design.

Andrea grew up on a hobby farm in Eastern Pennsylvania and earned a BA in Fine Arts from Kutztown University. She started quilting during her last class at university which changed the direction of her art. Her art career was interrupted for 18 years while she raised her children and lived a different creative life. When she returned to quilting, she tossed out many of the quilting rules. Her work, never truly conventional, has taken on sculptural forms.

Now living in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, she is involved in many arts organizations throughout the region. She is a Juried Artist member of SAQA (Studio Art Quilts Associates), sits on the board and exhibitions committee of the Virginia Quilt Museum in Dayton, Virginia, is the manager of the Foundry Art Market c-op.

Her work travels around the country and world in numerous national & regional juried shows, including four SAQA Global Exhibitions and can be found at various galleries, museums, public and private collections.

Statement

Once a traditional flat quilter, my work has left the surface to become sculptures that taunt the viewer to reach out and touch. My garden as it changes from season to season is the inspiration for my work. I start with botanical forms of leaves, flowers, or weeds, reducing the designs to more abstract forms, and finding the essence of the structure. I create art to show aspects of the natural world few stop to observe and serve as a start for conversations about saving our flora and fauna.

I use all textiles, new and vintage conventional quilting fabrics, repurposed quilts I made or collected, reclaimed tablecloths, curtains, and clothing from family and friends, salvaged upholstery textiles, and decorator samples diverted from landfills. Viewing my wall of collected fabric, fabrics will catch my eye bringing color, texture, or pattern to my art. Each piece is a unique collection of hand-cut fabrics, stitched together with liberal use of thread by dense machine quilting and top-stitching through multiple layers of fabric and batting, and occasionally stuffed or wired. The fabrics form the stiffness needed to defy gravity to create the desired shape.

In my work I am saving memories, the environment and creating art that is accessible to everyone. Art that makes you smile in a world that can be so bleak. I am creating a whimsical garden of flowers and vessels with ties to my family and community.