Like other quilters in the region, Wells and Williams tended to emphasize design, bright colors, and vivid contrasts in their quilts. They played endlessly with the form of the square and the straightforward strip, disguising and exploding these essential design elements in myriad ways.
Herminia Albarrán Romero learned the art of papel picado (Mexican paper cutting) as a child growing up in the small Mexican village of San Francisco de Asís, south of Mexico City.
Because of the utilitarian nature of her quilting, Rankin never thought of herself as an artist. That began to change in 1981 when she was invited to be a resident artist at the junior high school in her hometown of Lorman, Mississippi.
Adèle Clark was a founding member of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, the chair of the Virginia League of Women Voters (1921–1925, 1929–1944), a New Deal–era field worker, and an accomplished artist and arts advocate.
Ailsa O’Connor linked her art to society, both the themes she developed in her art and in the essays she wrote to explain the role of art in society.
Graves excelled at embroidering colchas with birds, animals, flowers, and other whimsical images. Her favorite subjects, however, were Catholic saints borrowed from religious paintings called retablos and three-dimensional sculptures called bultos.
In 1978, Fang Nhu and her husband were forced to leave Laos, their livelihood threatened by the Communist regime. In Providence, Fang Nhu became active in the immigrant Hmong community and was eager to teach her weaving skills to her daughter-in-law Ia-Moua Yang. For Fang Nhu, weaving was not just making cloth, but was representative of a social fabric.
A basket maker and porcupine quillworker, Yvonne Walker Keshick creates birchbark masterpieces realistically decorated with quills that depict natural images as well as cultural symbols of the Odawa tribe. Also a devoted teacher, she has developed resources and provided instruction to ensure this art form is passed down to others as it was to her.
Lebanese-American lace maker
Castellanoz became an important figure among Mexican Americans in a wide area because she made paper and wax flowers for baptisms, weddings and quinceañeras.