Farragut Town Hall exhibit features quilt block artist for July, August
Mary Agnes Schaefer of Farragut creates quilt squares using a marine board as her canvas.
“I have done cloth quilts but they are not my cup of tea,” she said.
Farragut Arts Council has chosen Schaefer as its Featured Artist for July and August. Her exhibit features her quilt blocks.
“Each month, the work of an artist or group of artists is featured in specially designed cases on the second floor of the rotunda in the Farragut Town Hall,” Chelsey Riemann, Farragut Pu-blic Relations coordinator, said. Schaefer started painting quilt blocks on marine plywood for her daughter, Ann Marie, in 2010.
“She runs Annabell’s Emporium restaurant and antique business in Loudon and needed a quilt block,” Schaefer said. “It just so happened I had a book on quilts.”
She took ideas from the book and made a 5-by-5-foot block, which hangs on the exterior of her daughter’s business. From there, Schaefer continued making quilt blocks.
“My husband does the math, and I do the designs and paint them,” she said. “All the paint is exterior paint and exterior varnish.”
Her favorite designs are abstracts and geometric shapes. They are small enough to hang inside or on the exterior of a home. Some of her blocks also hang on barns and other buildings. The quilt block hanging on the outside of her home was done in 2011.
Some of her ideas came when she and husband, Bob, took a road trip on a quilt block trail.
“We decided to go and see what else was hanging and what other people did,” Schaefer said.
They went from Rutledge, the home base for quilt blocks, to Athens and then to North Carolina.
“Just driving along, you will see a barn with a quilt block.,” she said.
Quilt square trails are a movement across the United States and includes one in Tennessee called the Appalachian Quilt Square Trail, Riemann said.
For more information about the Farragut Town Hall exhibit or to access a Featured Artist of the Month application, call Lauren Cox at 865-218-3372, e-mail to lcox@townoffarragut.org or visit online at townoffarragut.org/artsandculture.
Farragut Town Hall is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and is located at 11408 Municipal Center Drive, directly across from the Farragut Branch Post Office.
