Quilting and poetry come together this week at the Design Museum during the opening reception for the museum’s winter exhibition, the Verve of Quilted Textiles: African American Quilts from the Sandra McPherson Collection.

McPherson

McPherson, a professor emerita of English, writes poetry inspired by quilts like the ones in the Design Museum's exhibition, more than a dozen that she has gifted to the university’s Design Collection. She joined the UC Davis faculty in 1985, as a teacher of creative writing and poetry as literature.

Some of her friends, fellow poets Andy Jones and D.R. Wagner (UC Davis lecturers in writing and design, respectively), and Alice Anderson and Patrick Grizzell, will read from McPherson’s works at the reception. It is scheduled from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday (Jan. 23), free and open to the public.

The exhibition’s quilts ­— from Gee’s Bend, Ala., California and elsewhere — showcase the rich tradition and artistic vision of the African American quilting community.

The quilters do their thing, and McPherson does hers: transforming the visual narrative of the quilts to rhythmic patchworks of American culture.

The narratives emerge from the profound colors, ornate patterns and free arrangements of swatches cut from new or used textiles, taking the quilts beyond their utilitarian purpose to convey family stories and social evolution.

“Fragments from used jeans, sack bags, worn knitwear, and men’s ties are sewn together stitch by stitch, opening windows on their journeys,” reads a Design Museum news release.

MORE EXHIBITIONS, MORE RECEPTIONS AND MORE

• The Art of Athletes — Works by nearly two dozen Aggie intercollegiate athletes on a dozen teams. The entry list includes 38 works: clay, acrylic, charcoal, linocut, wood, metal, oil, ceramics, woodcut printmaking, photography and sculpture. Friday-Monday, Jan. 31-Feb. 3, Basement Gallery, Art Building. Opening reception, 5-7 p.m. Friday (meet the artists, 5:30-7). Hours the next three days: noon-6 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 1; 1-5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 2; and 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday, Feb. 3.

• Flat Fusion Five — First solo exhibition by Matan Shelomi, a Ph.D. candidate in entomology and a longtime volunteer at the Craft Center. Through Feb. 7, Craft Center Gallery, South Silo. Reception, 5-7 p.m. Friday (Jan. 24).. Regular hours: 12:30-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 12:30-7 p.m. Friday, and 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday.

• Receiver — Solo exhibition by textile artist Marie Watt (Seneca) includes a work-in-progress: 408 linear feet of hand-stitched tapestries. She’s just starting the two-year-long project, and will lead a sewing circle here (starting at 9 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 19) and at other museums for help in creating the tapestry. Through March 14, C.N. Gorman Museum, 1316 Hart Hall. Artist talk and reception, 4-6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 20. Regular hours: noon-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, 2-5 p.m. Sunday.

• Trayecto Anómalo — Works by Chilean artists Danilo Espinoza Guerra, Ricardo Fuentealba-Fabio and Iván Zambrano Downing, all of them professors at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Opening reception, 6-7:30 p.m. Thursday (Jan. 30), Taller Arte del Amanacer, or TANA, 1224 Lemen St., Woodland.

• The Verve of Quilted Textiles: African American Quilts from the Sandra McPherson Collection — More than a dozen quilts from Gee’s Bend, Ala., California and elsewhere, given by Professor Emerita McPherson to the university’s Design Collection. Through March 14. Design Museum, Cruess Hall. Regular hours: noon-4 p.m. Monday-Friday, and 2-4 p.m. Sunday.

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