The Art of Joan Schulze is an Honorable Mention winner in the Reference Books Category of the 9th Annual Writer's Digest National Self-Published Book Awards. Competition was particularly fierce this year—more than 1,900 books were entered. A formal announcement will be in the August issue of Writer's Digest and on their web site.

"The artwork itself is creative, expressive and original. It is the product of a true professional artist. The production quality of the book is top-shelf coffee table book. Extremely expensive to produce, the heavy cover, thick glossy four color pages and large folio size make this book capable of 'conveying the artwork within'. Finally, the content is professionally handled. The jacket copy is well-written and on-target. Likewise, the introduction and following texts do an excellent job at conveying the creative journey of the artist."
- Judges comments

"It is also one [book] that is fully capable of rivaling the best productions of the commercial publishing establishment."
- Melanie Rigney, Writer's Digest Editor

Art Quilt Magazine
The magazine devoted to the art quilt.
Issue #11 / 2000

In a just world, all major quilt artists would have a volume like this on their work-- a lusciously printed record of their work, artistically presented as reflects the quilt artist's oeuvre. Art historians would have a complete record of the artist's work, her/his artistic life would be properly documented, the insightful essays would enhance there viewer's appreciation of the artworks shown in glorious reproductions. Just, not real.

This volume adds one more star to the accomplishments of Joan Schulze, quilt and collage artist and poet. Her tenacity in pursuing her art, as revealed in this book, is probably the only reason we have this book to enjoy and to learn from. The book itself has the rare physical beauty of a finely designed and crafted artwork - rare today in the mass-market mentality of publishing and the banality of internet publishing with its lack of proper editing or typesetting, not to mention lifeless pixilated images of quilts.

Joan's quilts and collages come alive through the combined excellence in photography, separation and printing used to produce this book. They rest on the high-quality paper as jewels, true representations of the originals in clear coloration and definition of detail and texture of the surface. Quilting and the dimensionality it produces appear as clear in the reproductions as looking at the quilts in three-dimensional space.

Beyond the physical beauty of the book, its substance matches that of the art it presents. Beginning with a very personal essay by Constance Howard, Joan's mentor and teacher, The Art of Joarl Schulze traces the artistic development of Schulze, placing her work in the historical context of international art and fiber art. Essays by curators Dyana Curreri and Jette Clover trace Schulze's development of her work and portray the artist in personable terms. But the quilts and collage works tell even more. Several poems by Schulze add a different dimension to her work.

Schulze's work could easily be viewed as visual poetry which flows in a continuum of artistic development from her early embroideries and quilts through her abstract landscapes and collage works of silk and paper for which she is best known. This book contains it all-- the work she has produced, the historical documentation, and the essence of her artistic pursuit.

The Art of Joan Schulze: An Appreciation
by Robert McDonald

This survey of her career, featuring full-color reproductions, essays by three distinguished artists and scholars, original poems and comprehensive chronological and bibliographical lists, is as remarkable an achievement as one of Joan Schulze's mixed-media studio works. It carries to a public, broader than ever before, visual and written information -- literary as well as critical and historical -- about an inclusive artist who composes her works using information about and impressions from life during the second half of the 20th century. In realizing her vision, she uses, among other means, materials as ancient as cotton, silk, linen and paper and as contemporary as plastic fabrics, lint and Velcro; she uses traditional dyes and modern acrylics; hand stitchery, machine stitchery, and phototransfer. Her antecedents range from the makers of medieval and Renaissance tapestries to anonymous farm wives to mixed-media, aleatory artist Robert Rauschenberg....
[See the full text]

Edited by Robert McDonald
Introduction by Constance Howard
Essays by Joan Schulze,
Dyana Curreri, & Jette Clover
Book design by Morris Jackson
Published by Custom & Limited Editions, San Francisco, California

Copyright 1999 Joan Schulze
141 color plates, 168 pages, includes an extensive bibliography.
Introduction by Constance Howard, MBE, former head of Goldsmith's Textile Department, London, England.
Essays by Jette Clover, curator at the Dutch Textile Museum and Dyana Curreri, Director, Museum of Art, Washington State University, Pullman.
Also included are poems by the artist and several essays written by Schulze about her current work in paper and silk construction.

ISBN 1-881529-44-4
Limited edtion: ISBN 1-881529-45-2

Artist's Statement, Joan Schulze
8

Introduction, Constance Howard
11

A Life Without Limitation, Dyana Curreri
23

Looking for Beauty, Jette Clover
97

Paper/Silk Constructions, Joan Schulze
113

Scrolls
131

Haiku, Joan Schulze
139

Bibliography
150

Chronology
161

List of Plates
163

Poems

In Principio
9

Green Silk
10

Flow
12

Morse Code
24

Old Koi, Old Pond
26

Real Time
47

Questions
72

Silken Memories
130

Working
146