Ferman and Eunice Woodberry at their exhibit, Photo-to-Quilt, for 4 Pillars Gallery located upstairs of the Grand Center for Arts and Culture in downtown New Ulm. The exhibit is displayed until March 21.

NEW ULM – The 4 Pillars Gallery at the Grand Center for Arts and Culture is featuring the exhibit ‘Photo-to-Quilt: Quilt History from Traditional to Contemporary” by Ferman and Eunice Woodberry

This show features quilts made by Eunice and photo-collages made by Ferman. The exhibit will be on display from Feb. 21 through March 21.

“I got started with the idea of trying to make my photos look like quilts after watching Eunice quilt for 20 plus years, and I just thought well that would be a nice next step,” Ferman Woodberry said. “I like to do abstract photographs, so I take my photographs and manipulate them electronically to make them more painterly and abstract. The next step was to incorporate that into geometric forms, so I thought let’s try some basic quilt blocks and can I turn the photographs into something that looks like fabric.”

“And I’ve always looked at photos thinking it would be nice to make them in fabric, so I’ve been experimenting with different techniques to see if I can eventually take a photo and do some kind of realistic or semi realistic impression of it as a quilt,” Eunice Woodberry said.

Eunice has been quilting for over 40 years, and Ferman originally started his art with a love for oil painting. The couple met in college in St. Peter and have been living in in Minnesota ever since.

The show spans quite a few years of Eunice’s quilts. A typical wall hanging tapestry can take her anywhere from 80 to 100 hours to complete, which she does by hand and with a sewing machine. For Ferman, it can take him three to ten hours to complete a single photograph, which he texturizes and colorizes electronically with about 30 or 40 presets in the program until it is changed to his perspective.

As for working together, Ferman explains that they don’t actually collaborate that often.

“It’s more like, she’ll be working on a quilt, and she’ll ask me an idea of what I think about the avenue she’s going down for a quilt, but for putting together the show we really didn’t collaborate that much,” said Ferman Woodberry. “She had quilts that she was looking at, and I had a selection of quilt blocks that I wanted to try and play with, and it just so happened that our color schemes match. After 45 years of marriage, that happens.”

“I encouraged him and advised him on different blocks and just where to find resources for them and he’s always kinda done some of the early critique on these pieces as I sort them through. But for the show I wanted to show the development from traditional quilts to collage and pictorial ones,” said Eunice Woodberry.

Ferman believes that emotions play a huge role in his work, and both Eunice and Ferman would like to keep learning new techniques for the future.

“For me art is emotion. There’s so much I can do with my photography. Working with the quilt blocks now, or oil paints, encaustics, or other things in the future, so that it’s just another way of progression. I’m not sure what my end goal is other than to stay creative as long as possible,” said Ferman Woodberry.