Bio
Verona Wisconsin artist, Pat Kroth creates contemporary art quilts and fiber art installations. Her work features re-purposed materials, saturated color, and improvisation, utilizing surface design, collage with found objects and energetic machine stitching. Her award-winning artwork has been shown in national and international exhibitions including: International Quilt Fest, Quilt National, Visions, World Quilt, Fiber Art International, Crafts National and Art Quilt Elements. Her art quilts are in public and private collections including: Wisconsin Percent for Arts, and Epic Corporation. Her monumental work, Revisiting Jackson was acquired by the International Quilt Museum for its permanent collection of Award-Winning Quilt National Award Winners. Featured on Public television, published in 500 Quilts, Lark Books, her work can be found locally at regional art fairs and galleries. In 2019, her solo exhibition, Not Just Fabric and Thread at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY featured colorful art quilts filled with tiny fiber fragments and found objects. In 2022 her solo exhibit Lost, Found and Stitched at the WI Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts in Cedarburg, WI focused on re-cycled materials with installation and wall-mounted fiber art. Several pieces in the exhibit were composed of items donated, or saved and stock-piled during the pandemic. Her work is featured in a solo exhibit Saved, Salvaged, and Stitched at the Arts + Literature Lab in Madison, WI May 5-June 24,2023 with further installation and re-purposed material explorations. Embracing an active lifestyle, when she is not in the studio working, she’s often found out on the trail, her bike, cross country skis or snow shoes. Her adventures in the outdoors, often provide contemplative time and inspiration for her next artwork.
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Artist Statement
Like a magpie, I collect and incorporate found clothing, fabrics, and objects with interesting texture, color, or personal significance into my fiber artwork. I am drawn to cast-off, remnant and forgotten materials. My artwork constructions are comprised of layers of materials: re-purposed clothing, hand-dyed and commercial fabrics, yarns, cords, fibers, netting, found objects, and trapped threads that have been collaged, meticulously machine stitched or sometimes stapled together to create something new. Often, I think of my work as a random depository for the flotsam and jetsam of life. These repurposed clothes, candy wrappers, buttons, paperclips, jewelry, toys or other seemingly simple or mundane materials, enhance my work. The artworks echo the historical shadows of cloth and fibers from a previous use. I enjoy the playful ambiguity and richness of surface which invites the viewer to come closer, explore and to look further than just the riotous surface of things. These fiber works engage in a conversation about the abundance, role and value of physical objects in our culture.
