Denise Labadie, a fiber artist living outside of Boulder, Colorado, creates contemporary art quilts. Her works are typically interpreted visions of ancient landscapes and pre-historic megalithic stones – dolmens, stone circles, and standing stones – or more recent monastic ruins including ancient stone churches, portals and passageways, forgotten cemeteries, burial crosses, and the like.
Denise discovered contemporary art quilting in the early 1990’s, and now focuses on her art full-time. Additional emphases include both advanced fabric painting and furthering her increasingly detailed understanding and use of shadowing and perspective.
Denise’s work has been juried or invited into numerous national and international shows including the 2010 Int’l TECHstyle Art Biennial (Museum of Quilts and Textiles, San Jose, CA), Speaking with my Ancestors Art Show, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL (2008), Quilt National (2007), The International Quilt Society (2006), The American Quilt Society (2006), Sacred Threads (2001, 2003, 2005, 2007), Artist as Quiltmaker (2002), and Art Quilts at the Whistler (2002).
Denise is now an internationally recognized fiber artist and art quilter. Her quilt, “Dun Aengus Stone Fort”, for example, an ancient Irish portal, received two of the top awards – including “People’s Choice” and the McCarthy Award (for craftsmanship) – at Quilt National 2007 (the premier contemporary art quilt show in the world).
As of 2010 Denise began to de-emphasize her participation in competitions and shows, and has instead begun to focus more on commissions (i.e., quilting other people’s sacred sites), teaching and lecturing, and exploring the continued evolution and application of her techniques and fabric-based imagery. She is represented by the Shaw Cramer Gallery on Martha’s Vineyard.
