 Feature
Story
Pauline Salzman – Art Quilts
By David Liller
Published: February / March 2008
To visit the Treasure Island home Pauline Salzman shares
with her husband of 40 years, attorney Barry Salzman, is
to walk into one of her works of art itself. If one is
lucky, two of Salzman’s favorite models will greet the
visitor at the door. The large, friendly dogs –Weimaraners
– will lead the way though a home filled with works of
art, including a view of smooth waters of Boca Ciega Bay
and her own award-winning art quilts.
To understand Salzman’s works of art one has to forget
any previous ideas about quilting. In other words, these
aren’t Grandma’s bed quilts, but demanding visual images
that use cloth and thread as the medium. The quilts
displayed on her walls show a wide range of images and
styles, and many are tributes to the works of other
artists.
One of her better known quilts is a perfect example.
“Marilyn-Not Exactly” is a quilt that features four
images of one of Salzman’s Weimaraners. There are four
separate, colorful head shots of the dog, like four
panes of glass. The image eerily invokes one of the art
world’s most famous pieces of pop art – Andy Warhol’s
painting of Marilyn Monroe.
There are others as well. Like Picasso, Salzman has a
“Nude Descending Staircase,” only her nude is another
Weimaraner. Other quilts bring to mind other famous
artists. One titled “Yard Tools” could have been painted
by Grant Wood of “American Gothic” fame. Her “Russian
Icon Meets American Quilter” is so reminiscent of a
Russian religious image that it was chosen to be placed
in the hands of Russian President Vladmir Putin during a
Florida visit that was subsequently canceled.
But paying homage to other artists is only a small part
of Salzman’s body of work. Her original quilts have won
awards in art shows as far away as Japan and hang in
museums and in the homes and offices of private
collectors. Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court Judge Irene
Sullivan owns a Salzman quilt called “Let Freedom Ring,”
and the artwork displays the creativity and skill that
elevates Salzman’s work beyond the level of simple
craft. The theme of the quilt is the Civil Rights
movement, and features male and female figures. But it
is the details found in the material that makes it a
stunning image. “If you look very close, you can see
that I added faces to the man’s suit.”
Salzman’s stitching is also on display in a quilt she
did for the Florida Holocaust Museum in Pinellas County.
The quilt is a vignette of several scenes with one large
image dominating, a can spilling out the powder that was
the base ingredient in the gas used by the Nazis to kill
Jews in concentration camps during World War II. In this
case, her attention to detail gave the work additional
emotional impact. “I used 60 different types of white
for the gas. In the gas you can see where I quilted in
skulls.”
It’s this level of needle and thread work, the use of
unpainted material, and dedication that Salzman has
developed since she first started quilting in 1993 that
she feels are her hallmarks in the quilting world.
“Technically I don’t think of myself as a great artist –
a lot of people draw and paint better than I do. But I
think I’m better than most people when it comes to
understanding the way fabric works.”
Even though she came late to the art of quilting,
Salzman said she had been sewing all of her life. In
fact, she sold her Pinellas County-based sewing machine
business before she started learning to quilt. And she
continues to take classes routinely to both improve on
her current techniques and learn new skills. Salzman
says that is a key element to getting the quilts to come
out as she pleases. She said stitching the quilts in the
right way and getting the edges right is what allows the
quilt to hang correctly and allow its beauty to be fully
appreciated.
 Her
stitching technique is on full display in a quilt that
shows a boy sitting along side a river holding up a
fish. In the quilt small stitches enhance the curves of
the images, in one area creating swirls that make the
water seem to be moving. But after the quilt received a
somewhat unfavorable review during a competition,
Salzman said there was only one thing to do.
“I ripped up and redid the quilt,” Salzman said. “I’m
willing to do things over if I have to.” Redoing a quilt
is no easy task. Salzman said it takes her about 178
hours working in her small home studio, at her sewing
machine (mostly in the afternoons), to make one art
quilt. The amount of time it takes to create her art is
due in part to the process Salzman uses. She doesn’t
quilt plain cloth and then paint her image on the
fabric, as do some art quilters. She instead chooses the
colorful fabric carefully to create images (and shadows)
in her quilts. She then uses her sewing machine to pull
all the colors together to achieve the desired effect.
Salzman said it is often hard to find buyers for the
quilts because the price she charges reflects the amount
of work that goes into making each work of art. “I also
think some people still see this as simply women’s
crafts, and not real art. Thankfully, I don’t have to
make a living off of my quilts,” she said.
Salzman’s situation is not all that unusual for Florida
artists. That’s according to Richard Heipp, a professor
of art at the University of Florida. Heipp, himself a
well-known painter and creator of large-scale public art
projects, says trying to make a living from one’s
artwork alone is a complex issue.
“Most artists I know have a job they make a living at,
and then they try to make their art on the side. I make
my living as a professor; I don’t think I would be able
to do my art without that,” he said. Heipp said
generating a sustainable income from art involves many
factors; one of the primary ones is deciding what sort
of art to pursue. He said some art finds a home in the
state’s many art shows, such as the annual Gasparilla
Festival of the Arts in Tampa.
“I think there is an art show every weekend somewhere in
Florida,” he said. Heipp said other works of art are
gallery-based, where buyers and collectors come to
purchase one-of-a-kind creations. He said an example of
this type of artist is Damien Hirst of Great Britain,
whose recent work featuring a diamond-encrusted platinum
skull sold for $100 million.
“There is only a handful of artists making $1 million a
year. It has to do with the market, the market they are
in, the demand, and how much one is willing to pay for a
particular work of art,” he said. “It’s a volatile
mixture of high fashion and high money.”
For most artists, it’s a matter of trying to find an
appreciative buyer who has a lot of options when it
comes to spending his or her art budget. “Actually,
$5,000 for a piece of art isn’t that much. But who has
$5,000 for art? If you have $5,000 for art, you have
everything else you need. These people tend to be very
wealthy,” Heipp said.
Although many of Salzman’s works sell for much less, she
still depends on word of mouth as her main marketing
tool. She has also acquired a reputation by winning a
variety of art and quilt shows throughout the country.
She recommends anyone wanting to express himself or
herself through quilting to take classes wherever he or
she can find them.
“Learn as many different techniques as you can. I take
classes, and I find my background in tailoring helps me
in my art. Someone is always going to be better than you
at something. You learn from them; then take it and make
it your own.”
back to top |
