Fabric of Art

Tragically, it came in the aftermath of September 11, when this Jersey City fabric artist and quilt entered her studio and found that those same random scraps of fabric suddenly resembled the Twin Towers with an angel hovering nearby. From her home, Yost had seen the plane crash into the second tower and watched both towers burn and crumble on the New York skyline.

Yost contemplated whether or not to finish the piece. When she realized she was having trouble returning to her art because of what had happened, she thought that finishing the Twin Towers piece would help. "It's not the sort of thing I'd usually do in response to an event," she says. "But it begged to be finished, so I did."

Most of the time, Yost's art is inspired not by an event, but evolves through life experiences. She never starts with a theme, but instead finds one as she works. "I explore and take in a lot of different images, and it takes awhile to digest. Eventually something rises to the surface," she says. With needle, brush, camera and computer, Yost creates a new genre of art by combining the classical grandeur of Italian frescoes with the down-home roots of her grandmother's quilts.

Growing up in Wakarusa, Ind., she remembers watching her mother, grandmothers and aunts create quilts, while she and the other children hid underneath and pointed out their stitching mistakes. "Our home didn't have art, but quilts were my earliest exposure to design," she says. "I never quilted myself, but was always opinionated about colors and patterns."

Even though Yost has followed in their footsteps, she has defined her own path. She works alone in a brightly lit studio instead of in front of a coal stove and lives within a mile of New York City. She has shown her work often at the Noho Gallery in Soho, the Jersey City Museum and numerous other galleries. She is in the permanent collections of the American Craft Museum in New York City, Virginia Art Institute and JMU's neighbor, Rockingham Memorial Hospital. She has been featured in the books The Art Quilt and America's Quilts. She also taught at one of the most prestigious schools in Manhattan, The Spence School.

Just like her grandmother, Yost begins with a simple piece of fabric. However, her artwork emerges as she adds layers of painted patterns until the scrap has gone from white to a lush, textured color. "I loved painting bold strokes and big brushes, so I started thinking how I could use fabric as an expressive medium," Yost says. "Then I just started altering commercial fabrics with paint."

From there she pins the different colored fabrics onto a white board, until a noticeable shape begins to emerge. Then she begins to create the distinctive style of art she is known for, adding photos ("I have shoeboxes full of photos, which I guess is my quick way of making a sketch of something.") from her travels by manipulating them on the computer and transferring them to fabric and melding them into the greater piece of art.

Because much of her art springs from her vision of the places she has been, her series of works also constitute a visual diary and scenic tour of her travels. Handprints, a Yost series that is on display in her home studio, came to life after she visited caves in the Southwest and photographed the handprints of American Indians. She then worked those images into her quilt pieces and even shaped each piece of artwork to symbolize the shamans who painted on the walls.

A trip to Australia for a teacher exchange brought about her amazing 3-D, multilayered pieces titled Bird Books. Each piece in the series consists of fabrics that have been stitched to look like wings, but then also fold into each other to form a book. "Before I went on the trip, I had been reading about Australian aboriginal art," she says. "But when I arrived, the bird life took me by surprise; I saw these beautiful birds that would sit on a rail as you wandered by."

When she returned home, Yost began her regular artistic evolution and worked to represent her trip by creating the bird nests with basket weaving. When that didn't work, she decided to try something different and began making Bird Books.

Her most recent series, Domestic Allegories, emerged after three trips to Italy. Impressed by the strength of the women in the frescoes she saw there, Yost photographed the other major element in her artwork -- household items -- at flea markets. She experimented by melding the two and created a series of pieces celebrating women.

Last fall, the Oasis Gallery in downtown Harrisonburg showcased Domestic Allegories. Her show brought Yost back full circle to JMU, where she had begun her art career.

Yost lived in an off-campus boarding house while she finished her degree in art education. She witnessed the opening of Duke Hall, which houses JMU's art program and which, along with the nearby music building, could become part of a fine and performing arts complex funded by a proposed bond issue. "I never dreamed when I went to JMU that someday I'd have my own show," she says. "It was great to see my professors, who were very generous about my work."

After graduating in 1969, Yost took up teaching, feeling as though she had found her calling within the art world. "I was so lucky; I found something that I immediately loved," she says. "It is so satisfying to have a room full of children pleased with themselves that they made something that they liked." Yost eventually landed at The Spence School, home to some of New York's most prestigious children, although she never favored them over others.

Dianne Martin, a teacher in the visual arts department at Spence, shared a classroom with Yost for more than 20 years. "Erma was a master teacher, and all her classes loved her," Martin says. She also remembers one instance where Yost uncharacteristically left her art materials and samples in a taxi on the way to school. "Erma was able to cope somehow with doing a demonstration without her materials ... Her resilience and capacity to think on her feet is just phenomenal," Martin says.

Recently retired from teaching, Yost is active in a group called The Art Quilt Network of New York, which works to enhance awareness of the art of quilting. "We try and work to give quilting its due respect. We don't want quilts to be classified as crafts," she says.

In her own art, Yost has paid the handiwork of her grandmother's generation the greatest respect, elevating quilting from its provincial roots to the heights of New York City sophistication. "I'm an object maker," she says. "Handling fabric and sewing feels authentic. In the process, I just hope I can express some ideas."

Rachel Woodall Roberts ('98)

Photo: Stephen Lipuma