Robbi Eklow

Robbi
Eklow
Title
Regional Representative
Location
Mills County, Iowa
Bio

I've been making art quilts for longer than I can remember. I was in Quilt National in 2001, and again in 2021. I wrote a column for Quilting Arts Magazine for twelve years. I have taught in the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia for National shows, and guilds. I've taught and won ribbons in various AQS, Mancuso, and World of Beauty shows. I am currently a JAM with SAQA.

I moved to Omaha from Chicago a few years ago.

I make fused quilts with hand-dyed fabrics I create myself, and then free-motion quilt them.

I like math because there is always a definite answer. I think the shapes created by geometry are beautiful. I'm interested in how the world can be defined by math, and specifically, I like to use the numbers that are used in astronomy and timekeeping.

While many things around us are arbitrary, the relationships between the earth, the moon, and the sun are not. You can divide a day in an arbitrary fashion: 24 hours, 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute. But a day is defined by the earth rotating once around its axis. The moon takes about 28 days to rotate around the earth. We know this because we can watch it wax and wane. The tides are affected by the way the moon rotates. Women carry the tides within our bodies, and that interests me. There are thirteen lunar months in a year, 52 weeks, seven days in a week. I use those numbers in my designs.

I use shapes that occur in nature and in mathematics; the spiral, arches. Shapes from culture include greek keys and gears. I arranged these in groups of lunar numbers sometimes adding multiples of twelve, as divisions of time.

Red January - Eklow

Red January,  33" x 47", 2020

Robbie Eklow