Katherine Westphal (January 2, 1919 – March 13, 2018) was an American
textile designer
Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...
and fiber artist who helped to establish
quilting
Quilting is the term given to the process of joining a minimum of three layers of fabric together either through stitching manually using a needle and thread, or mechanically with a sewing machine or specialised longarm quilting system. A ...
as a fine art form.
Early life and education
Westphal was born January 2, 1919, in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
, California to Emma and Leo Westphal, who managed grocery stores. At age two, she began cutting, pasting and coloring and decided that she liked to do that more than anything. She attended Los Angeles public, elementary, junior and senior high schools. In 1941 she earned an Associate of Arts degree from
Los Angeles City College
Los Angeles City College (LACC) is a public community college in East Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. A part of the Los Angeles Community College District, it is located on Vermont Avenue south of Santa Monica Boulevard on the former campus ...
. She then transferred to the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, where she studied painting and art history and received BA and MFA degrees in painting. In 1943 she was awarded the Phelan Traveling Scholarship for Practicing Artists, established by
James D. Phelan
James Duval Phelan (April 20, 1861 – August 7, 1930) was an American politician, civic leader, and banker. He served as nonpartisan Mayor of San Francisco from 1897 to 1902. As mayor he advocated municipally run utilities and tried to protect ...
, former U. S. Senator from California. The scholarship provided funds for travel to Mexico, where she visited the studios of muralists
David Alfaro Siqueiros
David Alfaro Siqueiros (born José de Jesús Alfaro Siqueiros; December 29, 1896 – January 6, 1974) was a Mexican social realist painter, best known for his large public murals using the latest in equipment, materials and technique. Along with ...
and
Diego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, known as Diego Rivera (; December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957), was a prominent Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the ...
.
Academic career
In 1945 Westphal accepted a one-year teaching position at the
University of Wyoming
The University of Wyoming (UW) is a public land-grant research university in Laramie, Wyoming. It was founded in March 1886, four years before the territory was admitted as the 44th state, and opened in September 1887. The University of Wyoming ...
, Laramie, where she discovered that she was expected to teach art in grades one through twelve, rather than supervising practice teachers and teaching art at the college level. She complained to the university authorities, exchanged classes with other faculty members, and created her own course outlines. Standing up for herself and protesting when situations were not to her liking became a characteristic attribute of her academic career. She moved to Seattle, Washington in 1946 to teach two-dimensional design and drawing in the Art Department at the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...
. While there she met
Ed Rossbach
Ed Rossbach (Chicago, 1914 – Berkeley, California, October 7, 2002) was an American fiber artist.
He earned a BA in Painting and Design at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington in 1940, an MA in art education from Columbia Univer ...
, one of the 20th century's most important teacher of textiles.
They married in 1950 and moved to Berkeley, where Rossbach had accepted a teaching position at the University of California. Westphal could not be hired at the university because of nepotism rules. She began a new career in textile printing and sold her fabric designs for the next eight years. When her agent, Frederick Karoly, retired and returned her unsold design samples, Westphal cut them up and sewed them back together, collage-style, to make "art to wear" and
art quilts. Her quilts were shown at Museum West in San Francisco and the Museum of Contemporary Craft in New York. Two of the quilts are now in the Renwick Gallery, in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. In 1966 she agreed to teach a design class for one quarter at the
University of California, Davis
The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...
. She stayed, became a tenured faculty member in 1968, and turned a design appreciation class that no one wanted, into one enrolling 300 students each term, with ten assistants working with her. She became a full professor in 1975 and retired in 1979, honored as Professor Emeritus.
Fiber artist
"Almost everything I do is related to where I've been or where I'm going to go. Basically, I'm a tourist, moving around the world to faraway places either by actually traveling to the spot or by using the armchair method. Then it all pops out in my work - someone else's culture and mine, mixed in the eggbeater of my mind to create a reality for me and a better understanding of what I have seen or experienced. Much of my work is autobiographical, a record of images observed and treasured".
The crafts revival of the 1960s led Westphal to incorporate quilting into her artwork. As a trained painter, she brought appreciation for a traditionally female craft to an accepted medium of expression in contemporary art. Her quilted wall hangings are examples of invention found in traditional techniques. She combined applique, stitchery, batik, tapestry and quilting to create new forms, building up section by section, to create a new order. She manipulated images with the photocopier, making identical images; then combining them, layering them, and integrating the whole assemblage into one textile before hand-quilting the whole. Her 1967 quilt, "A Square is a Many Splendored Thing", was included in the 1969 ''
Objects: USA'' traveling exhibition and earned a full page color illustration in the 1970 exhibition catalog. Another quilt, "Puzzle of the Floating World," made in 1975, was included in the 1976 New American Quilt exhibition in New York, the first exhibition to feature contemporary quilts exclusively.
Westphal influenced a generation of textile artists. Her work includes painting, textiles designed for industry, art textiles for the wall, baskets, books, and clothing. She became a pioneer in pursuing new avenues of textile printing and image generation - including the use of the office Xerox copy machine, and heat transfer on both cloth and handmade paper. She was recognized as a "permission-giver", one who showed that nothing was off limits, including feminist revaluation of "women's work", and escape from textile traditions of precision and order.
In 1979 Westphal was elected to the
American Craft Council
The American Craft Council (ACC) is a national non-profit organization that champions craft based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded in 1943 by Aileen Osborn Webb, the council hosts national craft shows and conferences, publishes a quarterly maga ...
College of Fellows, an award given to "honor those who have made an outstanding contribution to the crafts in America." She received the 2009 Gold Medal for Consummate Craftsmanship from the American Craft Council. Artists selected for this honor must have demonstrated extraordinary artistic ability and must have worked for 25 years or more in the discipline for which they are recognized.
Westphal died in March 2018 at the age of 99.
Publications
*Westphal, Katherine (1979). Dragons and Other Creatures: Chinese Embroideries of the Ch'ing Dynasty. Berkeley, California: Lancaster-Miller Publishers.
*Westphal, Katherine (1993). The Surface Designer's Art: Contemporary Fabric Printers, Painters, and Dyers. Asheville, N.C., U.S.A: Lark Books.
Notes
References
*Bavor, Nancy C., “The California Art Quilt Revolution” (2011). Open Access Theses and Dissertations from the College of Education and Human Sciences. Paper 98.
*Janeiro, Jan. (August/September 1988). "Piece Work: The World of Katherine Westphal". ''Fiberarts'' 48 (4): 33.
*Koplos, Janet, Metcalf, Bruce, & Center for Craft, Creativity & Design. (2010). Makers: A History of American Studio Craft. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
*Moseley, Spencer. (1968). Quilted Textiles and Wall Hangings, catalog. New York Museum of Contemporary Crafts.
*Nordness, L. (1970). Objects: USA. New York: Viking Press.
*Shaw, R. (1997). The Art Quilt. New York: Hugh Lauter Levin Associates.
*Sider, Sandra. (2010). Pioneering Quilt Artists, 1960 - 1980: A New Direction in American Art. Charleston, SC: Photoart Publishing.
*Smith, P. J., Janeiro, Jan. (1997). Ties That Bind: Fiber Art by Ed Rossbach and Katherine Westphal from the Daphne Farago Collection. Providence, R.I: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.
*Stabb, Jo Ann. (2004)
"Katherine Westphal and Wearable Art" DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln.
*Westphal, K., Nathan, H., & Bancroft Library. (1988). Katherine Westphal, Artist and Professor. Berkeley, Calif: Regional Oral History Office, the Bancroft Library.
*Westphal, K., Austin, C., & Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America. (2002). Oral history interview with Katherine Westphal.
External links
Browngotta ArtsAmerican Craft Artists > ArtistsMuseum of Arts and Design (MAD) Collection DatabaseArchives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution > Research CollectionsRenwick Gallery Smithsonian InstitutionBrowngrotta Arts Blog: "Gold Medal Winner: Katherine Westphal"American Textile History Museum: "Art Quilts from Around the World on Display in New Exhibit"
*
ttp://www.eichlernetwork.com/article/textile-artists-get-personal Eichler Network: "Textile Artists Get Personal"SFGATE: "Jungles of Images by Katherine Westphal"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Westphal, Katherine
1919 births
2018 deaths
American textile designers
Artists from Los Angeles
Los Angeles City College alumni
UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni
University of California, Davis faculty
University of Washington faculty
University of Wyoming faculty
Quilters