Jane Ingram Allen has been awarded a grant by the City of Santa Rosa for a public art project to commemorate the October 2017 wildfires in Santa Rosa, California, that destroyed so many homes, businesses and forests. Jane’s artwork “Living Quilt for Santa Rosa” consists of a handmade paper quilt with seeds for wildflowers added to the pulp in the same colors as the quilt pattern. The quilt uses the traditional “Wild Geese” quilt pattern. The blue color in the quilt is paper pulp made from recycled blue jeans. The yellow-orange pulp is abaca (a type of banana leaf fiber) dyed with a non-toxic fiber reactive dye, and the white pulp is the natural color of the abaca. The wildflower seeds in the yellow-orange strips are for California poppies. The seeds in the blue pulp are for California bluebells and mixed blue wildflowers, and the seeds in the white pulp are for Baby’s Breath and white poppies. Community people will join the artist in helping to make the handmade paper quilt and weave a headboard and footboard of local trimmed branches for the “flower bed”. All of the materials in this eco-quilt are natural and bio-degradable and will change over time to become a living, blooming bed of wildflowers. “Living Quilt for Santa Rosa” will be installed in a public ceremony at Rincon Ridge Park, off Fountaingrove Parkway, in Santa Rosa, CA, at 2PM on Saturday, Dec. 1.

Everyone is invited to visit Jane’s studio in Santa Rosa on Saturday and Sunday, November 4 and 5, from 11AM to 5PM to help make paper for the project. During these two days, Jane will be holding community participation workshops to make handmade paper for the “Living Quilt for Santa Rosa”.  The workshops will be held during the Open Studio weekend at Studio Santa Rosa, 3840 Finley Avenue, Building 32, Studio 107.  For more information email info@janeingramallen.com