Artist Bio

Agnes Stadler is a self-taught fiber and mixed-media artist who was born in Budapest, Hungary, and raised partly in Havana, Cuba. She moved to the United States over 25 years ago, and makes her home in Edmond.

Her art quilts are inspired by the mid-century modern aesthetic, a variety of folk themes as well as outsider (street) art. She finds creative excitement in rethinking the functional craft of quilt making as she explores a variety of graphic and textural elements to incorporate in her work.

Agnes has shown her work in galleries and shows (QuiltCon, Fabric Artists of Oklahoma, Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, etc.) in the U.S. as well as her native Budapest. She regularly runs popular fabric surface design and indigo dyeing workshops. She is a member of Fiber Artists of Oklahoma, a studio member of Artspace@Untitled in Oklahoma City, and also creates as part of the Qu’aint (“Quilt and Paint”) artist collaboration of Oklahoma.

Piece Description

The greatest challenge of this piece was how I could represent a “hard” industrial object in the “soft” medium of textiles. I believe I am not the first artist of the AAA Collective who found inspiration while taking a tour of the KimRay Co. premises. The ambiance, sounds, and smells of the industrial workshops brought back so many memories, and helped me learn about the story of the AAA valve.

My dad was a mechanical engineer, and I grew up watching him draft intricate technical drawings, by hand, on paper. I accompanied him more than once to hardware wholesale yards and stood by him while he worked on projects at home. To this day, I am attracted to all mechanical objects, especially the ones where you can see how they work - maybe that’s why sewing machines are my favorite gadgets?

As a first step of the design process, I usually make a rough drawing on paper. I like to see the drafts in life-size, rather than the small screen of a computer. One of the first things that grabbed my attention about KimRay valves was the burning red color of the paint on the equipment. I knew that only a number of different weights of fabrics with slightly different red hues could convey the light as it spreads on the many geometrical surfaces of the AAA. This is why I selected corduroy, quilting cotton, silk, and felt in reds that range from burgundy to carmine, cherry to tomato reds. Next came the selection of the background. A nice light gray linen, reminiscent of freshly machined steel, was the perfect blank slate to take the heavy quilting I was planning for the piece. Finally, a piece of black-and-white checkered fabric - a nod to the 1950’s style cafeteria floor at KimRay - served as the shadow cast by the valve.

There was one more stylistic choice I had to make to pull the piece together. In order to maintain a techno/industrial look, I re-imagined the AAA valve as a biker jacket, with a zipper and metal snap closures. Even added a tattooed heart to complete the look!