Judy Coates Perez

My son had a fascination with lichen when we lived in Texas. It was everywhere in so many different beautiful forms. Lichen is a class of organisms in which algae and fungi live in a symbiotic relationship as one. They are found throughout the world but are unable to survive where the atmosphere is polluted,…

Before I made Lichen I experimented with painting on Warm and natural cotton batting. I wanted to find out what the surface would look like, would it absorb the paint like a sponge or would it sit on the surface. It seemed also like it would make a nice soft surface for embellishing by hand.…

This quilt is part of the national traveling invitational exhibit “Women of Biblical Proportion” curated by mother and daughter team, Ruth Harris and Chantelle Cory. “The exhibit portrays the rich diversity of female biblical characters through contemporary art quilts. I chose Asenath, she was Josephs wife, as in the well known “Josephs Technicolor Dreamcoat” She…

The central image on this quilt is from an engraving from the renaissance, called St Michael overcoming Evil. When I saw this image it brought to mind our present history; one that President Bush has drawn parallels to by referring to our fighting the axis of evil. Tsukineko inks were used to paint the main…

This small quilt was the first piece I painted with the Tsukineko inks. It is whole cloth, machine quilted and embellished with beads and gold cording. 9” x 10” 2002

One day my daughter Nina mentioned that I had never done a quilt with a leopard on it. I decided to humor her and painted an image of a leopard on a moonlit walk through a dark and mysterious jungle. I realized I was trying to capture a quality I sometimes see in her, which…

I was inspired to make “Graven Images” while visiting cemeteries in New England, following up on some ancestral research. I found the symbols and images carved into the various stones fascinating in design, symbolism and historical context. Wanting to recreate the look of stone in cloth, I hand dyed fabric in shades of gray using…

Tea This quilt was the first in a series of word quilts. The definition from the dictionary of the word tea is written on the center panel. With a teacup drawn on fusible interfacing fused on top of the writing. The tea bag is made from sheer interfacing filled with snippets of fabric. 14” x…

I wanted to experiment with dimension on this quilt, and see what would happen if things broke the surface and went through the quilt. There are wholes in the quilt that the worms crawl through, you can see this clearly on the back of the quilt. There are also a few shapes that are stuffed…

I made this quilt so that I could have a good surface to experiment with machine quilting. To avoid putting a binding on it I satin stitched the outside with thread. I like the look, but it took a long time to sew and a lot of thread. 32”x 34” 1999

I had read about annealing metal and wanted to try it. I cut up several coke cans and held the metal over a candle flame outside (bad fumes). The aluminum became smoky and gold. When you heat metal evidently it goes through a molecular change and it becomes softer. So I took an old ballpoint…

When I made this quilt, I wrote this prayer to go with it. Mother Earth, Queen of Heaven, we celebrate with your many names. Within the earth that is your body, the waters of your living womb, the air that is your sacred breath, and the fire that is your radiant spirit life is born,…

I think Joan of Arc was an interesting figure in history; courageous, spiritual, devout, used for political gain and wrongly condemned. Joan and the angels are painted with textile paints and colored pencil. All of the cloth is either painted or hand dyed, It is machine appliquéd, pieced and quilted. 42” x 49” 1999

Prior to the introduction of Judeo-Christian mythology in Europe, the early agricultural peoples worshipped a god in female form. The creation myth of this early culture describes a Mother Goddess who creates a serpent to be Her mate, and tells the story of how they created the universe together. The four elements of creation are…