Quilt artist depicts stories of women’s bodies and lives

Kathy Nida puts a different face on quilts. Instead of the usual cozy, comfy covers with geometric or other designs, Nida’s quilts are pieces of art telling stories of women. Her quilts are currently in the Contemporary Crafts exhibit at the Grossmont College Hyde Gallery through March 3.

“It’s a very personal set of stories,” said Nida, an El Cajon resident. “When stuff happens to me, it shows up in my work, although sometimes in an allegory of sorts.”

Kathy Nida puts a different face on quilts. Instead of the usual cozy, comfy covers with geometric or other designs, Nida’s quilts are pieces of art telling stories of women. Her quilts are currently in the Contemporary Crafts exhibit at the Grossmont College Hyde Gallery through March 3.

“It’s a very personal set of stories,” said Nida, an El Cajon resident. “When stuff happens to me, it shows up in my work, although sometimes in an allegory of sorts.”

Prudence Horne, curator of the exhibit, said that Nida’s way of putting patterns, colors and shapes together in order to create her images measure up to a contemporary vision. 

“These images at first glance appear simple, but on further inspection they are complex and quite thought-provoking,” Horne said.

In the first room of the Hyde Gallery hangs Nida’s “Disrupted.” The work is actually two large quilts and two smaller quilts, which portrays the fragmentation that Nida was feeling about her life at the time.

The Earth Mother concept prevails in many of Nida’s quilts, as well. 

In the main room of Hyde Gallery hangs her “One of My Kind,” quilt, a humorous composition with a woman’s body as the central image. Below the ground on which the woman sits is an entire web of life systems. 

“That thought of the earth being mom to all of us, of a protective but incredibly dangerous and sometimes angry natural source that surrounds us, is something I like to explore,” she said.

In her artist’s statement, Nida says, “Women populate my work; it is hard to escape your uterus. The first 13 years of your life, you didn’t realize what freedom is. Looking back, after years of trying not to get pregnant, years of trying to get pregnant, then more of not as you survive menopause, and you realize you are becoming that free child again.”  

As a result of her self-admitted obsession, women’s body systems going wrong shows up a lot in her work. A life science teacher for 13 years, Nida portrays the complex body systems, cells and genetics in her quilts. Her early quilts don’t have all the inner body systems in them. The change in her work began after she’d been teaching science for a few years. 

Why Nida chose quilting as a medium was an artistic process as well as deeply personal choices. She enjoyed printmaking, but was planning on having children and the materials were toxic. By the time she did find a nontoxic method, her son was born. She made one more screen print after he was born, realizing that she needed something more portable and easier to do around kids, without all the dedicated time printmaking takes.

With quilt making, she could pick up the work for 30 minutes and then put it down if one of her children woke up from a nap or needed her.

“And then the fabric just drew me in. The palette for working with fabric is huge. I use my stash to get the colors I want, and people are always making new patterns and colors of fabric, so it’s an endless supply. Plus there’s a tactile quality to them.

“They have a slight 3D quality to them as well; you can use the stitching to pop the image out from the background,” Nida said.
 From the time that Nida was a kid herself, art has been a part of her life. Her parents put her in art classes when she was very young. In addition, a great uncle who was a painter encouraged her as well as a few art teachers over the years. Starting with mostly drawing, in college, Nida picked up ceramics and photography, then printmaking.

“It’s really finding the way to make the images in your head come out the way you want them, and for me that now means a combination of drawing and quilting,” said Nida.

Though her mother did teach Nida how to sew and embroider, Nida picked up a lot of embroidery finesse from books and friends over the years. 

Quilting is in Nida’s DNA, no matter how difficult it may be to juggle work as a life science teacher.

“It’s the balance game. If I have grading or schoolwork to do—which I always do– should I do a little before I make art, or not? And that’s a daily struggle, because I find I’m a much happier and healthier person if I make art every night, even if it’s just for an hour.

“I really do just want art to be a daily part of my life until I die,” she said.

The work of James Watts, a sculpture artist, with a specialty in doll-creating, complements the work of Nida in the Contemporary Crafts exhibit. He uses found tin, which he cuts and then puts together, creating a quilt-like appearance on a hard surface.

The exhibit will be up through March 3^rd. Hyde Gallery is located at Grossmont College, 8800 Grossmont College Drive, El Cajon, California, 92020. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday.