Velda Newman’s quilts are panoramic yet intimate. They are monumental microcosms assembled from the materials of fiber arts. Natural forms—flowers and fruit, fish and seashells, birds and butterflies—are depicted through the surface qualities of cotton and silk. Ranging from matte to satin, these fabrics suggest the textural variety of the natural world. Bits of wool describe the seams that are butterflies’ bodies—those physical centers of thorax and proboscis and abdomen and antennae. Essential as these parts may be, they are neither colorful nor cloth-like.

Color is central to all of Newman’s tissue. She edges wings and petals and the chambers of nautiluses in dye and ink and paint. Embroidery—French knots, and quilted dots and dashes of varying densities—amplifies the shadows and shading in the folds of leaves and wings. Newman wields primary and near-fluorescent color, and she demonstrates that “black and white” is really blue and violet, brown and gold. It is also the basic positive/negative language of pattern, and Newman’s spots and stripes embellish views of nature that are both close-up and far out.