Marcia Alpert’s Quilt Exhibit at the Rockridge Library Verges on Dreams

News Article

Dec 13

by Laura E. Miller

Artists gather at the Rockridge Library every Thursday to create unique items with yarn, thread and fabric. Fellow artists, ages 25 to 85, share artistic methods and swap life stories, open up about heartfelt quandaries and cheer each other on.

One of these artists is Marcia Alpert, whose brilliant quilts and watercolors will be exhibited in her solo show, “The Illustrated Journey,” upstairs in the library from Friday, Dec. 12– Jan. 29. A collection of the drawings that inspired her quilts will also be on view there at the artist’s reception on January 3.

After a traumatic fall in 2023, Alpert began doing small, nightly ink and colored pencil drawings to aid her spiritual recovery. She dubbed them “healing shapes” and they eventually morphed into images of people and animals. These compositions eventually evolved into pictorial wall quilts.

Her quiltwork came to the attention of the adult services librarian Anita Bowen, who urged Alpert to exhibit them there. That commitment energized Alpert and moved her to create six new quilts.

Her latest piece—a quilt inspired by her own drawing—is called “Virus Monster Over the Town” and shows a deceptively friendly looking creature floating over three buildings and observed by a person and a dog.

“Marcia’s work makes me stand still and be happy,” a fellow artist said. “It really sparks my imagination; her energetic output is inspiring.”

Alpert’s works are colorful, fantastical creatures who are impish or cherubic, spritely or thunderous. The pieces conjure up a story in a viewer’s mind. Witnesses to Alpert’s work have been reminded of the dreamlike symbols in the paintings of Marc Chagall or the fantastical Golden Compass stories of Phillip Pullman.

She writes that her figures have “eyes to see” and “fingers and toes to take action,” each element a vignette of a spiritual and symbolic journey anchored in physical reality.

Alpert exhibited watercolor paintings throughout the 1990s and 2000s locally and at art fairs in the western states. Fabric work and quilting paralleled her painting along the way. In addition, much of her own wardrobe is hand- and machine-sewn.

Since retiring from her day job in materials prep at the Berkeley Public Library in 2008, she is enjoying quilting with the East Bay Heritage Quilters and is especially fulfilled by participating in charitable endeavors there. She intends to continue her engagement with the library needlework circle and to evolve with her art, building new exhibits as she is inspired.