Paula Nadelstern:
Master of Symmetry
About the Artist
Paula Nadelstern has achieved international recognition for her innovative and complex designs inspired by the bilateral symmetry of kaleidoscopic images. Honored by inclusion in the Twentieth Century’s 100 Best American Quilts, her quilts were showcased in the American Folk Art Museum’s first one person exhibition highlighting the work of a contemporary quilt artist (2009). In addition to numerous awards, she is a recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and The Bronx Council on the Arts. Paula is the author of six C&T books and the designer of over thirty Benartex fabric collections. She lives on the same block in the Bronx where she was born.
Artist Statement
For almost forty years, the state-of-the-art kaleidoscope has not only been my design inspiration, it’s also been my classroom. Analyzing not only what a scope is but also what it isn’t has steered me in lots of valuable directions. I’ve learned to manipulate physical properties like rhythm and line in order to inject a feeling of motion into an otherwise static image. But it is the unique qualities synonymous with the kaleidoscope personality that I’m always trying to get to know better. Surprise. Magic. Change. Chance. In order to conjure an instant of luminous and fleeting spontaneity, I’ve got to trust in symmetry, rely on detail, commit both random and staged acts of color and understand that the whole will always be greater than the sum of its parts.
KALEIDOSCOPIC XLIV: Continue to Continue
KALEIDOSCOPIC XXXVIII: Milliflori
“I’ve got to trust in symmetry, rely on detail, commit both random and staged acts of color and understand that the whole will always be greater than the sum of its parts.”