(Above: Sheri Pyron and her dog, Gracie, by one of her landscape art quilts. Pyron, also an accomplished musician and watercolorist, lives in her childhood home near Dexter; photos by Paul Carter.)

By Randi Bjornstad

Sheri Pyron has a long musical history in the Lane County area as a horn player, performing through the years with many groups, among them the Riverside Chamber Symphony, Oregon Brass Society, and a quintet called Blugene Brass, at locations varying from Eugene’s Hult Center for the Performing Arts to area churches to the grounds of the historic Eugene Masonic Cemetery.

But all that came to an abrupt halt when the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, and Pyron’s life, like so many others, changed dramatically.

All her musical groups had stopped practicing and performing, she recalls, and her own family had just moved from their house in Eugene to the very house in which Pyron grew up, nearly 20 miles away on a hilltop acreage near the community of Dexter.

But between the isolation caused by both geography and the public health threat, Pyron had time to think about other pursuits. In addition to her music, she had been a watercolor artist since college, but she wanted to try something new.

Sheri Pyron preserves memories of places she has traveled as intricate art quilts.

“I had always wanted to teach myself how to quilt,” she recalls. “So I decided to make a quilt block every day until COVID ended.”

At first it was just squares of pattern and texture, “but then I started to think about themes for quilts, things like gardens” she says. “And each day I did a journal entry, about my quilting process, about being isolated at home, and about being with my family 24/7.”

After she had finished 50 blocks, Pyron started to sew them into panels, and that’s when she got the idea of using quilting to create landscapes.

“I tried to do research on landscape quilts, but I couldn’t find anything,” she says. “So I must have looked at about 10,000 landscapes and abstract paintings online, and I thought hmm, maybe I could do that myself, as quilting.”

She started by copying some of those paintings in fabric form and liked what she was seeing.

“I had always considered that quilting was a craft, and I wondered if it was self-indulgent to consider it art? I had to get over that disparity and just try to do it and see where it might go,” she recalls. “Would it be art, or would it be craft? I decided I would be happy with either.”

That openness led to her decision to make quilts depicting the landscape of the family ranch, starting with one she called Forgotten Road, based on a pathway she remembered from childhood but which by then was gone. Next came one commemorating a little community store, also no longer in existence, followed by a rendition of Dexter Lake, a prominent feature of the community.

But suddenly, no more.

“My muse disappeared, and I didn’t feel like doing them,” Pyron remembers. “I took a year off.”

What rekindled her enthusiasm was a couple of trips to the British Isles — famous gardens in southern England, time spent traveling while doing graduate work in Liverpool, including experiencing the “incredible beauty” of Scotland.

“I took a ton of pictures and came home and researched the places we’d been and found a million more photos online,” she says. “So I took different parts from different photos — more a sense of place than a particular place — and began again to create quilts.”

Now she has quilted landscapes hanging all throughout the house. She uses an industrial sewing machine  — “100 percent metal,” she says — and starts by making a mock-up of a quilt.

“I can’t really say how it happens,” Pyron acknowledges. “I start at the bottom and work up. I add one piece at a time — it’s really an organic process.”

That doesn’t mean she’s trying to recreate the environment she witnessed.

“I try to include some colors that aren’t there literally but feel like the place I saw,” Pyron says. “Sort of some zinger colors.”

Thrift stores can a treasure trove for amassing quilting fabrics.

She uses mostly smooth, solid color fabrics, but occasionally includes some textured pieces that remind her of the landscapes she remembers. She frequents thrift stores for sheets and pillowcases and tablecloths. Leftover pieces she often uses to quilt hot pads to give as Christmas gifts.

Doing quilts the size of a painting rather than to cover a bed satisfies Pyron’s artistic bent.

“I really enjoy doing the smaller works — I can finish one in about a week and immediately get it into a frame,” she says, via a quick, easy, and workable method that involves a hook-and-loop fastener (such as Velcro) to affix to the quilt and the backing.

Pyron’s latest series focuses on places in Oregon, which she hopes to finish in 2025.

 

 

Â