Local Artist Designs St. Louis Storytelling Festival Quilt
A quilt designed by local artist Edna Patterson-Petty commemorating the 30th annual St. Louis Storytelling Festival will be on display during this year’s festival at the Gateway Arch April 29 through May 1 and at the Touhill Performing Arts Center at the University of Missouri¬–St. Louis on the evening of May 2.
Inspired by festival founder Ron Turner’s metaphor of the “spark of story that has flown through the ages,” advisory board member and former festival director Nan Kammann-Judd wrote a brief story about the festival in celebration of its 30th year. “I was reading the story,” said Patterson-Petty, “and trying to create a quilt based on what I was reading.”
It’s a fluid quilt, no squares in sight. “A traditional quilter does square off everything,” Patterson-Petty said, “but, you see, I’m more fine art.” Themes of each of the 30 years of the festival float down a mighty river beside which images of a man and woman rise out of the story fire on the riverbank. And sparks from that fire are scattered across the quilt.
Patterson-Petty, a lifelong resident of East St. Louis, has master’s of fine arts degrees in studio art and art therapy and is one of 44 quilters who, at the request of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., made a quilt to celebrate the inauguration of President Obama for an exhibit that is on display in D.C. through July 26.
Thanks to the support of its generous donors, the St. Louis Storytelling Festival is a free public festival featuring regional, national, and international storytellers in numerous locations throughout the area. Since the festival’s debut in May 1980, its audience has grown from 5,000 to almost 25,000. The schedule for the 30th annual St. Louis Storytelling Festival, which runs April 29 through May 2, can be found online at http://storytellingfestival.org.
Pictured above, Edna Patterson-Petty (center) presents the quilt she designed in commemoration of the 30th annual St. Louis Storytelling Festival to members of the festival commemorative quilt committee, (left to right) Becky Walstrom, Sue Hinkel, Mary Lu Bretsch, and Nan Kammann-Judd, in her East St. Louis home.
