M. Joan Lintault (1938-2020) was an internationally known fiber artist, teacher, mother, world traveler, animal lover, steward of nature and generous soul.
Joan was born in 1938 in the Bronx, NY to Evelyn Garcia and James Pugliese. Her father had a passionate interest in books, which he shared with Joan and her younger sister. This provided Joan with a rich collection of imagery from an early age and her imagination continued to influence her artistic development throughout her life.
Joan was a person of many layers. She was a mother of two children to whom she dedicated much of her life. Her biggest joy later in life was seeing her grandson grow up. She was a self-made woman who raised her children under challenging conditions. She also played piano.
Joan always kept dogs, cats, rabbits, fish in tanks, fish in ponds, and chickens. But her favorite pet and companion was a dog, especially big dogs because she could “hug them better.” Her love of nature was the muse and greatest inspiration of her artwork. She was a gardener of the type that takes stewardship of the land. Joan was a walking encyclopedia of plants, animals and bugs.
Joan was a world traveler and experiencing other cultures was a source of wonder. Joan’s first language was Spanish, which she used as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Peru conducting crafts development, where she assisted weavers, knitters, and dyers in improving the quality of their work, introducing fast dyes, and setting up a crafts cooperative. Subsequently, she taught weaving at the Esquela Artisano de Ayacucho, where she designed a four-harness loom, a tapestry loom, and built spinning wheels.
Joan’s career started as a graduate of the New Paltz State Teachers College, now State University of New York, in 1960 in art education, Joan went on to obtain an MFA in ceramics at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale in 1962. But it was the experience in Ayacucho, Peru, from 1963 to 1965 that caused her to become intrigued by fibers, natural dyes, and what she called the “infinite possibilities of cloth.” Upon return to the United States Joan began to experiment with techniques for the creation of imagery on cloth for art quilts, techniques that included photo sensitive dye, blue printing, brown printing, Polaroid transfers, screen printing, air brushing, and sewing machine lace, among others.
Eventually she developed a highly personal artistic vocabulary that was rooted in a rich and complex exploration of the natural world in all its contrasting patterns, colors, textures, and scales. It was her focus on the details of nature, rather than the great overview, that animated Joan’s work, from the sensation of thousands of rustling leaves to the sounds of scores of insects who inhabited a lush floral environment. These seemed to hang in the air because of her use of machine lace that created complex open spaces in her compositions.
In 1978 Ms. Lintault received an Indo-American Fellowship Research Grant for 9-months study in India. This project was titled Textile Co-operatives and Processes of India. She traveled extensively in India in order to observe traditional textile processes. She was also able to observe the function and operation of textile co-operatives and their effects on craftspeople in the village life of India.
In 1984-85 Ms. Lintault received a Fulbright Research Grant for 9-months study in Kyoto, Japan. The grant was titled The Japanese Art of Kusaki-zome (grass and tree dyes). The Fulbright research included exploration of the historical background of traditional Japanese dyes and their use with the textile resist techniques of katazome, yuzen, and shibori.
In her later work, Joan began to incorporate letters and text into her work, as well as trompe l’oeil effects so that she could contrast the surface of the cloth with greater three-dimensional details. She also integrated language and poetry in various pieces, but always with a keen sense of the importance of texture, color, and, above all, negative space. In his book The Art Quilt (1997), quilt expert Robert Shaw called Joan, “. . .one of the most consistent and original of all contemporary quilt makers.”
The originality and impact of Joan’s artistic vision is such that her work is represented in numerous public and private collections, including the White House, the Renwick Gallery of the Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York City; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock; Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, Golden, Co.; International Quilt Study Center, Lincoln, NE, and The Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, VT, among others. She has been represented in some 30 invitational exhibitions across the United States and in Japan, Poland, France, Austria, and Brazil, as well as in 33 juried exhibitions. She also had a solo retrospective exhibition “Evidence of Paradise: The Quilts of M. Joan Lintault” in 1999 at the Illinois State Museum in Lockport.
Among her numerous grants, awards, and prizes are a National Endowment for the Arts, Craftsmen's Fellowship Grant, a Fulbright Research Grant for 9 months study in Kyoto, Japan, and an Indo-American Fellowship Research Grant for 9 months study in India.
In 2021, two of her pieces were featured in Abstract Design in American Quilts at 50: New York Nexus, at the International Quilt Museum.
Joan’s artistic vision was matched by her generosity and passionate interest in teaching. In 1973 she returned to Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, School of Art and Design, to direct a textile and fiber arts program in the art department, where she remained for 27 years inspiring many students. Upon her retirement from Southern Illinois University in 2000, as a full Professor Emerita, she returned to New York, where from her home studio in New Paltz, she continued to share her knowledge and philosophy for the next 15 years, both in person and through her blog “The Magic of Light, the Mystery of Shadows.” The culmination of her desire to inspire others to “make art” is evident in her book M. Joan Lintault: Connecting Quilts, Art & Textiles (2007).
In her own words…
I begin my work with white fabric because I see its possibilities. Fabric can be used in many different ways. It is an obedient, forgiving material. I want every process and technique that I use to contribute to the content of my work so I dye, print, and paint my own images. The nature of fabric is that it accepts color and so it is more responsive to me. I like to yield to what happens with the process while working.
Fabric is sensual and can be manipulated. It can be made to have weight, mass, and texture. It creates atmosphere by reflecting and changing its appearance in light. For me, the result is a material with the potential for an infinite expansion of expression and form.
I place myself solidly in a textile tradition and because of that I feel free to use any textile technique that would contribute to my work. I look back in history to see where I came from, but the new comes through my experience of working.
As it was with my predecessors, the embroiderers, quilters, and lace makers who worked with fabric and thread, time is not a factor when I work. I do not choose to reject a technique simply because it is laborious. I base my work on geological rather than TV time. I am obsessed with every colored spot of dye and how it looks next to another colored spot. The use of my fabrics has led me to create a body of work that begins from the dyeing and printing of the fabric to its construction on the sewing machine. Using the technique of free-motion embroidery on the sewing machine has allowed me to introduce texture and lace in my work and to build the quilts in a unique way. Rather than constructing and sewing them in the traditional way, I sew the work by piecing the individual elements together using appliqué, quilting, sewing machine lace, and embroidery. The lace work that joins the pieces takes advantage of the resulting negative space. This enables me to eliminate the background that is usually used to hold the image together. I want the technique to enhance my subject. With the basic theme of paradise and the use of my imagery, I am able to use the various forms of plant life, flowers, vines, stems, and insects.
My objective is to produce a series of quilts that are motivated by metaphors of paradise and the evocative use of nature to inspire spiritual and uplifting feelings. I would like to place myself with those artists who have established an unbroken history of works of art dealing with the theme of paradise. The subjects that I wish to address are largely traditional, such as trees, garden, flowers, animals, fruit, and vegetables. These visual images offer me associations with many levels of meaning.
Japanese screens and 1st-century Roman garden rooms are historical examples that use nature symbolism. The wall paintings in Imperial Roman garden rooms of the late1st century BC and early 1st century AD were rich with symbolism. In these rooms people could refresh their minds while contemplating nature. The same contemplation was used as the basis for Japanese screens. The images on the screens were meant to inspire a feeling for the beauty of nature and the Japanese idea of mono-no-aware, the "pathos of things".
I choose trees, leaves, flowers, fruit, vegetables, and insects for similar reasons. I want to construct the character of nature and paradise from its smaller parts. I also want to bring perpetual summer indoors, the cool of the forest, the heat in the meadow, and the whine of insects in the grass.