Timna Tarr to Give Gallery Talk July 16 at Texas Quilt Museum

The artist, designer and teacher Timna Tarr will visit the Texas Quilt Museum and give a gallery talk and walk of her exhibit “Timna Tarr’s Noble Menagerie” on Saturday, July 16.

Admission is free beginning at 2 p.m. and the talk starts at 3 p.m.

“Noble Menagerie” began as a way for Tarr to explore making quasi-realistic fabric portraits of farm animals. Moving through the series, she realized that the images highlight the dignity and individual personalities in each animal, reflected in her highly original titles. The construction process starts with a blown-up photograph and ends with her piecing together the eye. Tarr explains that she needs to get to know each animal before tackling “the window to the soul.”

Tarr describes her artistry as follows: “My work is about color and small compositions. Each block in a quilt is made as its own element, independent of the other blocks. After all of the blocks are constructed, my goal is to arrange the small compositions to play off each other and work together to create a larger whole. What keeps me engaged is watching how the project changes and transforms with the addition of each color and texture.

“The resulting quilts are contemporary works, set in this time and place, which reference the rich tradition of quilt making.”

Tarr comes from a long line of quilters, but she did not begin quilting until after studying art history in college. She bought her first longarm in 2001 and began quilting clients’ quilts shortly thereafter. Timna’s own nationally award-winning quilts are in private and corporate collections. They have also been seen in numerous exhibits, magazines, and books as well as on The Quilt Show and Quilting Arts TV. Timna is a designer for Studio e Fabrics and is an in-demand teacher and speaker. She lives in South Hadley, MA and works out of her studio in Holyoke, MA.