Heidi Parkes: Soft Magic

March 6–June 8, 2025

Heidi Parkes: Soft Magic presented the mid-career retrospective and catalog of renowned quilter, mender, and educator Heidi Parkes.

Parkes is celebrated for her delicate hand stitching and innovative improvisational quilting techniques. This exhibition traced her artistic journey, highlighting her profound connection to textiles from the early stages of her craft to her most recent works. She is well-known for her Diary Quilts, personal reflections on her daily life expressed through fabric.

For Parkes, quiltmaking embodies the transformative power of creativity. She believes it can cast a spell, influencing real life. By drawing on principles of sympathetic magic and the Law of Attraction, she combines material significance, diagrams, labor, repetition, artifacts, and symbols to create powerful narratives. Her work often resembles an evidence board, as she filters her genuine and tender aspirations through a lens of abstraction, inviting viewers in while keeping her privacy intact.

Parkes approaches her craft with a lighthearted spirit, aiming to create beauty reflecting everyday life's fleeting nature. Her quilts undergo hand-stitching at nearly every stage, including piecing, appliqué, embroidery, and quilting, to achieve the softness that defines her quilts.

The exhibition also showcased works by artists who significantly impacted Parkes's practice, including Anne Wilson, Diana Guerrero-Maciá, Amanda Nadig, Shawna Doering, Vanessa Freund-Baden, and collaborators Zak Foster, Luke Haynes, Joe Cunningham, and Stephanie Fortin.

The catalog “Heidi Parkes: Soft Magic” is being re-printed, with an expected delivery by the end of November! You may purchase the catalog for pre-sale here.

A special public program took place in concert with the exhibition:

On March 15, 2025, we celebrated National Quilting Day with the opening of the exhibition. This special day featured a variety of engaging events, including:

Book Signing (1:00–2:00 PM): We celebrated the release of the exhibition catalog "Heidi Parkes: Soft Magic." Heidi Parkes and Roderick Kiracofe, author of "Unconventional & Unexpected: American Quilts Below the Radar, 1950-2000," were on-site to sign copies of their books. Both titles were available for purchase.

Panel Discussion (3:00–4:30 PM): Attendees participated in an insightful panel discussion featuring noted artists Heidi Parkes, Roderick Kiracofe, Luke Haynes, and Amanda Nadig. Tickets were priced at $20 for members and $25 for nonmembers.

Gallery Reception (5:00–7:00 PM): We concluded the day by enjoying the Heidi Parkes: Soft Magic exhibition while connecting with fellow attendees in the gallery. The event was free and open to the public.

Along with several classes offered by Heidi Parkes:

Heidi Parkes - Quilted Tank Top (Thursday–Friday, March 13–14, 2025; 10am-4pm each day).

Heidi Parkes - Framed Quilts (Sunday, April 13, 2025; 10am–4pm).

Heidi Parkes - Diary Quilts: Documenting, Manifesting, And Storytelling with Stitch (Monday–Friday, May 12–16, 2025; 10am-4pm each day).

Heidi Parkes: Soft Magic was generously supported by a grant from Susan G. Wernecke.