Quilts of renewed expression
- Gary handcrafts powerful narratives of his personal history through quilting
- Wrongly imprisoned for 41 years, his quilt work draws on his life experiences
- His pieces are held in public and private collections across the USA
Gary Tyler’s vivid, pictorial quilts are rooted in the traditions of the American South. He builds them through appliqué, with figures cut sharply as illustrations and stitched into cloth with the direct language of graphic art. Gary began by cutting patterns for quilts made for inmates in the hospice unit of the prison in which he was wrongly imprisoned between the age of 17 and 57. For Gary, quilting uncovered a thread of family memory, from his grandmother piecing blankets together from worn cloth to his mother sewing dresses for his sisters. “The idea of care expressed through making was in my DNA,” he says. Today, from his Los Angeles studio, Gary has turned quilting into a form of self portraiture and gained authorship over his story. “Through my art, I can finally tell my side of what happened, the part no one heard,” he says.
INTERVIEW
I sketch everything myself. Sometimes I start with a photograph, tracing the figure and then placing myself in their position. I consider where they are, perhaps the Caribbean or the banks of the Mississippi. From there, I build the background around them. I colour code the fabrics then use appliqué to construct the image layer by layer, matching the thread to each piece to bring out the detail.
The butterfly begins as a caterpillar, facing constant threats from predators and weather. When it becomes a butterfly, it carries all of that with it, the good, the bad and the ugly. My own life was once tattered and torn apart. But piece by piece, I rebuilt it. The butterfly, for me, reflects that process, emerging whole, and even beautiful, despite everything.
When I left prison, I had nothing. People who knew my craft started a GoFundMe to help me build a studio, but I still had no sewing machines, scissors or fabric. As word spread, donations began to come in. I had to ask myself, can I still do this? As the proverb goes, once you learn to ride a bike, you never forget.
It is surreal and surprising. It was not something I was aiming for. I just wanted to give the world my best as an artist. My practice is my heart, my life and a reflection of everything I have been through. Every stitch, every piece of fabric is meticulously intentional.
