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Big Sandy-area woman brings fine art to quilts

“Blue Paint” is indeed a horse of a different color.

Brenda Yirsa’s picture of a horse against rolling hills may have been the first contemporary western quilt design to grace the walls of the Russell Auction showrooms.

Along with a quilt depicting a cowboy in a long duster coat, it’s also making a splash in quilting circles. Both are based on original paintings, which Yirsa translated into fabric.

“She’s bringing fine art into the quilt world,” said Traci Suzanne Marvel, sales and marketing director for the Bigfork Bay Cotton Co. Soon quilters everywhere will be able to combine the iconography of western art with the comfort of home needlework.

Bigfork Bay Cotton Company is producing patterns based on “Blue Paint” and Yirsa’s cowboy quilt “American Icon.”

Quilts on the edge
When Marvel discovered Yirsa’s paintings at the Charlie Russell Auction last year, Bigfork Bay Cotton Company was just getting off the ground.

Owner Lynn Stalowy first began the business to distribute Aurifil thread, Egyptian cotton imported from Italy. That grew into a quilting shop.

“There’s wonderful art work out there that would translate beautifully into quilts, she said. “So we decided to ask some very talented artists if we could license there artwork so we could show off the Aurifil thread.”

“We look for edgy designs; artwork that’s fresh, new, innovative,” Marvel said.

“We look for designs that take people to another level,” she added. “That’s what true art is -- it makes people feel something.”

That was March 2006. In June, Yirsa visited the company. By October, she’d stitched the two quilts with bright batik fabric donated by Timeless Treasures Fabrics. That month, Bigfork Bay took the quilts to hang in the Aurifil booth at the International Quilt Festival in Houston.

In January 2007, Bear Thread Designs invited Bigfork Bay Cotton Company to show their quilts at the Puyallup Sewing Expo. The patterns weren’t ready for purchase by that time, but no matter. The company got more than 400 pre-orders for patterns based on quilts by Yirsa, Montana, artist Toni Whitney and Californian Debi Hubbs.

By May, 15 quilts were ready to go on display at Bigfork Bay’s booth at International Quilt Market in Salt Lake City.

Our patterns are broken down step by step, so even a midlevel beginner could take one on, Staloway said. “The more sophisticated the quilter, the more they bring their own style.”

Some kits will have the exact fabrics, while others just provide a pattern so the maker can choose their own colors, Yirsa said.

“I’m kind of a bright person,” she added. “Maybe not everyone would want a blue horse.”

Not your grandmother’s quilt
Bright colors are characteristic of her paintings, pastels and quilts.

“I just enjoy color and seeing how these things are going to come together,” Yirsa said. “It’s the same with fabric and paint.”

Alongside the original designs on display in her quilting room are traditional patterns such as Grandmother’s Flower Garden.

“(For) anyone who works with fabric, it’s good to go back to basics and feel how the women of the past did it,” she said, noting that her three grandmothers all quilted.

Of course, Yirsa didn’t stop with traditional designs.

At a class with quilter Ruth McDowell, “I realized a person can paint with fabric,” she said. There she created an unusual design of a yucca plant, learning how to piece together abstract shapes and curved lines.

These days, she sometimes starts cutting without any pattern at all.

Most of her quilting -- the actual sewing of finished layers together -- is done freehand with the sewing machine. “A horse of a different color” is stitched in cursive all over her blue horse. Sometimes she sketches out a new design to make sure she isn’t stitching herself into a corner.

Yirsa also likes dots. Rows or spirals of circles show up frequently in her sewing.

“The process is fun, but the best part is the finished product -- especially if it turns out how you anticipated it would,” she said.

Paint and pastel
Oil paint is where the artist’s career began, when she was a little girl in North Dakota taking summer classes from an octogenarian Catholic nun. She never forgot Sister Ann’s lessons, even as she studied other media in school. In college she majored in animal science, but continued to paint on the side.

For a dozen years pastels took over as her favorite medium. With no brushes to wash, it was more convenient when she and husband Ken were raising their three children. Now that the youngest is off to college, oils are back on the palette.

“Pastels are quite messy and you need so many. With paint you can have a few colors and mix,” she noted. Plus, she likes “smushing the paint around.”

Her subject matter also has evolved. From the portraits that used to fill her canvas, she now focuses on dogs and landscapes.

Without access to all the breeds she’d like to paint, she finds pictures on dog aficiando Web sites.

Landscapes are easier to find. Living on a ranch 20 miles from Big Sandy and 100 from Great Falls, she takes a lot of pictures while on the road.

“I’m really influenced by the way the light hits the land,” she said, adding that she goes through hundreds of photographs to find the right one.

Her paintings are on display at Gallery 16 in Great Falls and Tumbleweed Gallery in Big Sandy. She also has a Web site, www.yirsa.com.

What she doesn’t sell, she hangs in her house.

“I figure all my paintings are for somebody,” she said. “It’s amazing how I have them for three or four years, and then someone buys them.”

Inspiration
Living in the country has its pros and cons.

“Our part of Montana has a subtle beauty. I think I can pick up on that and explain it to people,” she said.

Yet a trip into Great Falls is something of a production. Paintings are packed carefully to avoid damaging the frames, and the gallery is just one of several destinations while they’re in town.

“If I lived in Great Falls or Bozeman or Kalispell, it would be easier to run over to a gallery,” she said.

She also misses the art available in bigger cities.

“I went to the Chicago Art Museum and it was like oh, yeah, there’s other art besides Western,” she said. “It was inspiring to see the people I studied: Rembrandt, Degas, Monet, Manet....I wish we could pick up one of those museums and put it in the middle of the state.”

With her own art, Yirsa hopes to inspire good feelings. Her outlook is a cheerful one, influenced by her Christian faith.

“I don’t think any of us can capture that” -- she gestures to the fields out of the picture window -- “but I hope I’ve captured a little tiny piece of what’s out there and perfect.”

Her goals also include inspiring others to make art, and simply improving her own work.

“I used to think recognition was a big deal,” she said. “Now, I think you have to do your art because you enjoy it.”

This article originally ran on April 12, 2007, in the Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune. Article written by Laura Ritter, staff writer for the Great Falls Tribune.

Reprinted in Quilting Now, October 2007