Biography:
Mary Gillis is a certified public accountant, who began quilting in mid-career because she already knew how to sew from making clothes as a teenager. She studied Kathleen Weinheimer, a Bridgewater, MA quilt artist, whose classes and encouragement changed Mary’s life. What had been a casual hobby became an important means to artistic expression. In recent years she has also begun making artist books and learned solarplate printmaking. In addition to quilt design, classes Mary has studied color theory and two-dimensional design at the School of the MFA, and artist books and printmaking at Boston University. She is a member of Unbound Visual Arts and has exhibited through UVA as well as local and national juried shows.
Artist Statement:
My first step into making art was in photography. I had taken pictures for over thirty years with my fully-manual Nikkormat camera, and subsequently also got into digital. I am most attracted to black & white, but recently have been moving more into color. I especially like taking pictures around the city: people out and about, and shots of everyday sights that become abstract images.
I had also begun making quilts, which I started because I already knew how to sew. One of my teachers, Kathy Weinheimer of Bridgewater MA, made me realize that understanding about color theory and composition were important considerations, and she encouraged me to think of what I was doing as art. I gradually moved from making bed and crib quilts to making pieces meant to hang on the wall—some that were juried into national quilt or art exhibits.
Several years ago I took course at Boston University in making artist books—something that intrigued me for many years. It brings together my love of reading and libraries along with my desire to make things. The books can be awkward to show in a gallery, so in 2014 I taught myself HTML, CSS and a little javascript—and made a website for the books. You can find me at boundobject.com.
After admiring artist books for a long time, in 2012 I took a class at Boston University with Lynne Allen who is primarily a printmaker but is also a fine teacher of making books. We made fourteen books in six weeks! The ‘Moby Dick’ book was my final project for the class, and that summer was juried into a show in Pittsfield, MA in connection with their ‘Call Me Melville 2012’ celebration. In 2014 I went to the Penland School in NC for a two-week workshop concentrating primarily on books as three-dimensional spaces. Kathy Steinsberger, a book artist, and Sarah Glee Queen, an architect, taught that workshop.