Michael James 講評
Michael James Award 2010 - The 10th Quilt Nihon Exhibition, Tokyo, Japan

Sunset, Broadstairs/Kent

I selected this work because it evokes for me a peaceful, contemplative reverie, a moment of stillness and reflection that is a contrast to the incessant flow of information, sounds and sights that fill our everyday lives. This is a quilt that turns inward to touch the spirit and the soul. It doesn't announce itself loudly, but rather seems to float calmly and confidently in its own quiet space.

 

Masters: Art Quilts - Major Works by Leading Artists
by Martha Sielman
Lark Books USA 2008, pages 350 - 359

Inge Hueber

"Transforming passing time into a visible object" is how Inge Hueber describes the experience of creating her artwork. While her early work focuses on her invented variations on Seminole piecing, Hueber´s recent work uses the nine-patch block as its inspiration, but replaces the usual square pieces with stripes. Certainly no one would mistake the German artist´s quilts for traditional designs: The palette of her own hand-dyed cottons, her rhythmic color placement, and her use of visible seams as embellishment mark these as contemporary works of art... Saying that she invents what she feels, Hueber uses the placement of color in her geometric creations to express how she sees the rhythm of life. The use of strip piecing expresses her approach to life - simple, straightforward, and full of verve.

"From the beginning, I have dyed all my material, and I have learned a lot about the special language of colored cloth. I am still fascinated and often surprised by the quilting process - for example, realizing the potential of visible seams to add texture and depth....My quilts are a technical construction on one hand, and a combination of emotional colors on the other. I am searching for a balance between textile flexibility, color values, intuition, and precise craftsmanship...My quilts have developed into a kind of visual diary. I cannot plan changes - they occur when they are due, just as in real life. Making quilts has given me a key to my own life, a key to open doors that would have been locked otherwise."

 

Making Journeys, 2002
by Helen Joseph

Inge Hueber

Hueber’s commitment to quiltmaking is obvious. She is a self –taught artist, who through her work is driven to the dialogue between brain and the heart, looking to solve the problems of technique versus design.

Her strength lies in tow major areas, firstly her trust in her intuition, (“I arrange my pieces on my table and just wait and watch and hear, with my eyes, for those units ‘to start sing’ then I sew them together.”) and secondly her consummate skill in the use of colour and tone.  For over twenty years she has been excited by the art of quiltmaking, building on her repertoire by experimenting with dyes but at the same time constructing her quilts by  a relatively simple method, ‘strip piecing’. This is known as Seminole piecing, in which strips of different coloured fabrics are stitched together, cut apart, re-arranged and then sewn together again. Hueber’s trademark is to using hand dyed cotton. … As all quiltmakers know, whether ‘grass root’ or professional, the activity of cutting, stitching, arranging and piecing fabrics is immensely satisfying, (if at times deeply frustrating) and in Hueber’s hands this process is meticulously carried out. … The body of work that Hueber produces can be seen in a series and since the mid-nineties she has increasingly played with the ‘interrupted square’, fascinated by the opportunities that this simple shape offers. By shifting and rearranging this module she takes the viewer into a dance; sometimes a jig as in ‘Ikat Quilt Rhythm II’ and sometimes into a ‘waltz’ in ‘Colours Singing in the Sun’. Throughout her work runs an incessant beat which becomes graphically and boldly seen, but beneath the surface, lie the complexities of structure and illusion, which have evolved through many years of practice. In essence she ‘paints’ the textile surface with dyed strips of fabric, using rhythmic patterns to confuse and delight the eye.

 

Quilt Art 20 years (catalogue/book 2005)

We exist since 20 years!

This is in itself an achievement although our greatest dreams did not come true. The potential of patchwork and quilting is only discovered in small steps but our group is alive and represents a mixture of backgrounds and aims. After my lonely start in 1980 in Cologne, Germany, Quilt Art offered me not only a group to work with, but another language and culture. Since then a world wide web of coherences and connections has built up and, as a founder member, I am grateful to be a part of it from the beginning.

The world has changed in these twenty years, it has got faster, more virtual and less real, but we stick to a slow process and transform passing time into a visible object. In quiltmaking we invent, we produce and we communicate and these are some of the essentials of human activity.

I invent what I feel - the rhythm of life, changing emotions into colours and cloth. And I love to produce, sticking to strips and stripes. To communicate and connect is getting more important in my mind, and this is now made easier by electronic mailing and less expensive travelling.

 

The catalogue of Quilt Art 2001

Moving On
by Inge Hueber

I love strips and stripes: they are simple, straight-forward, everywhere and full of verve. For many years my work-space has been covered with lots of strips and for many years I picked just two colours to make long bands of five strips, which I re-cut into squares. But this time I have started to recycle my own material and cut up left-over squares into small strips. Four of these narrow strips make up a chequered module, a small unit, again nearly a square. I arrange them on my table and just wait and watch and hear with my eyes for these units to “start to sing”, then I sew them together.

I love colours and like to plan and to organise, these two elements are essential to my quiltmaking alongside my pleasure in networking and communicating with others. I like to dye, to cut with my scissors, to sew and to quilt (this time by machine) – a slow process full of repetitions and in a certain rhythm. In between the colours shine and I wonder how they act and react and interact.

New ideas, new concepts never occur sitting in my studio. They jump up when I’m not expecting them, sitting in trains or trams for example. I do not write them down, what I forget, I forget. Only ideas which stay alive will go into my next quilt.

Quilters’ Review, Winter 1993

“I am very bourgeois, really” – The birth of a German quilter
by June Freeman

Inge Hueber’s story has the makings of a good feminist fairy story. On her own account her decision to become a quilter represented a final realisation of long-felt artistic needs and a flowering of an independent personal identity.  … The fact that textiles lack status in the art world also seemed an advantage. “No-one is interested in textiles so it is a wonderful open world.” She had, as Germans would put it, ‘found a white spot on the map’. This, together with her newfound sense of ability, gave her a determination and assurance she had hitherto lacked. … “Earning money is a really important thing for many women. They feel much better…having their own earned money though they don’t need it…it’s not important for me…what I get from quilts I could not buy with money.” The nice middle-class girl has, in middle age, become a person in her own right. She continues to benefit from and take advantage of her liberal background, but no longer passively. … After some struggles with her ‘bourgeois’ inclinations she decided that the most effective thing was to turn her quilts back to front. As a meticulous and beautiful sewer she had to take a deep breath to do this. But she was pleased with the result. … There still remain important constants in her work. Her most recent quilts continue to reflect the aura and ambience modern urban life holds for her; she continues the technique of strip-piecing and cutting to express this and her range eschews the dark side of life. Inge Hueber has already given us some alluring work and we cannot fail to be interested in what this professional and imaginative quilter will produce in future.

 

Lichtblicke - Textile Strukturen

Inge Huebers's Art of Quilting
by Harald Weinrich

The old patchwork-art from America and England grew out of bourgeois thrift. But, as is often the case, the loveliest flowers sprout from the poorest soil. They were made from small pieces of cloth, carefully collected, which were cut into little patches and sewn together by hand.

Inge Hueber, as a German quilter, is separate from this Anglo-Saxon tradition and must dispense with the security and the support of the well proved technique, but she recognized her chance in this outsider's role, in a new freedom. She breaks away from the idea of recycling old patches in a quilt. "With a feeling of ecstasy", she later recalls, she bought 100 meters of white cotton in a London shop. Since then, cotton has been her medium, as she explains: "I love this plain simple material. It is not just attractive, it grows old gracefully and can be handled with facility."

To these qualities, which are typical for cotton, she adds her personal characteristic touch. She starts to dye piece by piece to get her own colour palette. In more than ten years she has gradually enlarged her repertoir of colours with many more shades.

Hand-dyed cotton is Inge Hueber's trademark. But while this choice for a material of her own has existed from the very beginning, her first quilts still respected traditional designs. But soon her creativity did not remain with the summary and tranquil proportions of the traditional way of expression. She developed her imaginative ideas and began to articulate her own artistic language. The static-geometric shapes are transformed into a variety of dynamic assymmetrical designs and free configurations.

The Seminole-technique has developed for Inge Hueber as an important structural element, named after an Indian tribe still living in Florida. In this technique, strips of different colours are sewn together, cut apart, then shifted and sewn togehter again. This traditional method is used by the artist in a free way and is further developed in her own individual manner, with many variations.

Inge Hueber's quilts are works of art, which reflect in all their phases the perfection of craftmanship and the inventiveness of their creator, but which, in the end, give the impression of being released from their own history and set free from all material limitations. In this way, the artist has created a textile language of her own, which knows no linguistic barriers, and her serene texts require no translation.