Getting it All Together: Jean Ray Laury and the Art Quilt Movement

Abstract

The American quilter and educator Jean Ray Laury played a pivotal role in empowering amateur women artists and quilters throughout her career. Laury was a significant figure in the Art Quilt Movement, or Art Quilt Revival, of the 1970s. This project examines Laury’s influence and role as an instigator in the Art Quilt Movement through three distinct moments that define her experiences as an artist and frame her placement in the history of textiles. Laury’s role in the Art Quilt Movement is explored through primary archival materials sourced from the Jean Ray Laury Archival Collection at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The first moment explored is higher education and art academia, particularly for female students in the 1960s. The second is tied to defining the Art Quilt Movement itself, along with drawing upon connections between the movement, and the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1960s and 70s, which is intrinsically tied to Laury’s career, and audience. The third idea considered is rooted in Laury’s archives and illustrious career of education and workshopping that provided not only stable income for Laury as an artist, but also a way to present herself to her intended audience, amateur women artists. I connect these three distinct but related ideas, and utilize them to fashion the overall argument, that Jean Ray Laury was instrumental in empowering and connecting amateur women artists through her connections with feminism, academia, and education. Laury cultivated her specific audience out of a group often left to the wayside- women in the home- and was extremely successful in doing so, thereby playing a major role in the expansion and development of the Art Quilt Movement as a whole.