New Jersey-born, Massachusetts-based artist Laura Petrovich-Cheney transforms found and re-purposed materials into sculptures that bridge quilting and woodworking. In her most recent work, a focus on environmental issues intersects with her own intimate challenges and losses to create an assessment of the real-world impact of climate change.
Petrovich-Cheney earned her BA in Fine Arts and English Literature at Dickinson College. Laura has an MS degree in Fashion Design from Drexel University and an MFA in Studio Arts from Moore College of Art and Design. She has taught in New Jersey public schools for fifteen years as an elementary-level art teacher and at the college level for two years, as well as presenting lectures and workshops to adults nationwide. Exhibitions include the 2018 Memory and Material exhibit at the International Quilt Museum and What Remains at the Fuller Craft Museum in 2017. In October 2017 at Brooklyn’s A.I.R. Gallery, Laura examined the political, social, and communal impacts of quilts in her curated exhibit Beyond the Bedcovers, a group show explored how quilting has evolved beyond its cozy functionality.
Her work has been published in several national and international publications including television, books, magazines, podcasts and NPR radio. In 2015, she was interviewed by the TV News 12 New Jersey and the Weather Channel for a nationally syndicated piece linking her re-purposed art to contemporary weather concerns. Laura has been awarded grants from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Residency, Barbara Deming Fund for Women Grant and the Clark Hulings Fund for Visual Artists. In 2017, she received the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture. In the summer of 2018, Laura completed a three-month residency at the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston, Massachusetts.
For more information, please see: LauraCheney.com and on Instagram @laurapetrovichcheney.
Laura Petrovich-Cheney, All the Light Within, February-March 2020. Salvaged wood collected from natural and man-made disasters. 36” x 36”. Image courtesy of the artist.
The piece was on display for the Radical Tradition: American Quilts and Social Change Exhibit at the Toledo Museum of Art. Reading is a great inspiration to me. I often title my works by quotes or lines from books as well as music lyrics. I particularly loved this quote from Maya Angelou’s “Nothing can dim the light that shines within you.” This was the last piece that I made before we went into “shelter in place.”
First, and most importantly, how are you doing? How are you navigating the highs and lows?
2020 was a like some bizarre flash back to 2013 but exponentially way worse. In a way, the aftermath of surviving Hurricane Sandy prepared me for the sadness and uncertainty that we have been experiencing for nearly over a year now. Just like then, I turned to my work because art making is life affirming. I can’t say that I always handled the sadness and anxiety well, though. Compounded grief never disappears – it ebbs and flows like the ocean tides. Some tides rise extraordinarily high and can cause severe flooding whereas the low tides can recede so far back that unusual treasures are found in the far-out sand. 2020 was that like that – extreme highs and deep lows.
Laura Petrovich-Cheney, Tower, 2019. Salvaged wood collected from natural and man-made disasters. H: 8” , W: 3”, L: 2.5”. Image courtesy of the artist.
These sculptural pieces are about structure, growth, and balance. There is no insistence on static perfection. The imperfections of the material reveal an aesthetic promise and are a testament to the material’s fragility and endurance.
It was in 2013, that I learned how quickly home, and community can be destroyed. My life was forever changed after Hurricane Sandy devastated my home and my parents’ house (my childhood home) at the New Jersey shore. In the storm’s aftermath, the once organized communities and lives of the residents were recognizable only as piles of rubble distributed haphazardly during the chaos of the storm. Clapboard siding, floorboards, cabinets, and window frames were often all that remained of homes torn apart by the storm's ferocity. The intimate textures of this wood, with its chipped layers of paint, nail holes and grain, told a story and suggested another prior life in the faded colors and worn surfaces. Knowing that objects which surround us can offer comfort and identity and become carriers of our stories, I never alter the color or texture. The material is left as I found it. I believe that material has memory.
During the repairs of his home, my father died suddenly of heart failure and my mother passed away just six month later. My takeaway from this storm left me more compassionate, empathetic and acutely aware of how life altering an unexpected change can be. The human experience of surviving an environmental disaster and the resulting profound loss forced me to incorporate messages of hope into my work. I mean, truly, the art of making with my hands had consoled and grounded me.
There were no connections to quilts, knitting or other crafts in my childhood upbringing; my mother had many issues and recoiled at the thoughts of domestic labor and handicraft. Inspiration instead came from my childhood stories of the American ideal of a pioneer woman's can-do resilient spirit and instinct for survival. The varied true and make-believe stories of strong women crafting quilts for warmth and comfort with scraps of cloth filled my head.
Laura Petrovich-Cheney, Paint it Blue, 2019. Salvaged wood collected from natural and man-made disasters. H: 4", W: .75", L: 1.5". Image courtesy of the artist.
During the crises of my parents’ death, the property loss from Hurricane Sandy, and eventual estrangement from my siblings, I found recovery in my work. Those traditional American patchwork quilts were familiar and comforting designs. I pieced together the salvaged wood collected from the storm into something meaningful and orderly, desperately seeking solace.
In 2020, when the pandemic, along with political and social crises and increasingly violent storms, presented a series of unprecedented losses and sorrows, my wood quilts became more complex and demanded an unrelenting focus. My woodworking skills have grown and as a result, allowed me to investigate more complex, repeating shapes. Ideas of repetition merging with personal tragedy was the inspiration for Home Sick, 2020, 48” x 48”. In this piece, the uneven heights and surfaces emphasize the distress and wear—mimicking life perfectly. Each piece of wood is different. Yet, when the pieces come together, they demonstrate order, repurpose, and resilience. The ordinary materials of wood siding, kitchen cabinets, even a dresser covered with stickers become recognizable in their past usage and make accessible the personal themes of loss and transformation, within the context of contemporary craft.
Laura Petrovich-Cheney, Home Sick, March 2020. Salvaged wood collected from natural and man-made disasters. 48” x 48”. Image courtesy of the artist.
This piece is the first of new series that I am making as I live through and reflect on the current pandemic. This seems to capture the phrase, “alone but together,” so well as we isolate and social distance from friends and family. I was inspired by a YouTube video: Tiny House Quilt Block with Jenny Doan and Misty from Missouri Star Quilt.com. When I shared this work with Jenny Doan, and she was so excited by the piece that she acquired the work.
Working with broken, discarded materials collected after a natural disaster reminds me of how incredibly impactful the forces of nature are and how completely vulnerable we are. Repetition creates metaphor for singular event of climate disaster repeating themselves in different locations – from hurricanes, to fires, tornadoes and floods. Entanglement, 2019, 48” x 48”, the pattern of a double wedding quilt, represents our interconnectedness to each other, the animals and flora and fauna that all exist on earth.
Working with discarded materials invites exploration of ideas universal to the human experience: nostalgia, second chances, renewal, memory, and the beauty of imperfection. Color invites hope, creates tangible and intangible connections to our memory. It is so important to know that I never paint the colors that I use – they are as I found them, and they bear the marks of usage.
Laura Petrovich-Cheney, Entanglement, Spring and Summer 2019. Salvaged wood collected from natural and man-made disasters. 48” x 48”. Image courtesy of the artist.
Inspired by the traditional double wedding ring quilt, this one was a real challenge to put together. I started using a template (think paper piecing) but the degree of damage to the wood alters how the reacted to the cuts. Wood does not shrink in a perfectly uniform manner and since this wood has been through a natural disaster, saltwater can really change its properties in unexpected ways. As a result, each piece had to measured and hand cut individually. It took nearly four months to make this one.
After Hurricane Sandy, my husband and I noticed how our neighborhood of little bungalows was replaced with modern condos and strangers, so we left New Jersey and moved to the Boston area in 2017. It took some time to purchase a home and when we did, there was nearly eight months of renovation needed. In the spring of 2019, my husband and I, along with our cat and dog, moved into the house with a large garage that became my studio.
After unpacking my studio materials, I was astounded how I hoarded every little precious piece of wood. I had hundreds of boxes of tiny, irregularly shaped pieces that I saved from every project. These scraps were so tiny, subtle and useless; yet they could never have been thrown away. In the late fall of 2019 and throughout early 2020, I stacked and glued the pieces into structures that resembled strange, fragile buildings. Often overlooked because of their diminutive size, these sculptures reflect my feeling of displacement and explore ideas that are rooted in the repetition of life—birth, growth, death, and regeneration. I am not sure the direction of this new sculptural work, but I find it a real challenge to keep the pieces upright and together.
Laura Petrovich-Cheney, Crazy Eights, Winter 2018. Salvaged wood collected from natural and man-made disasters. 36” x 36”. Image courtesy of the artist.
I am so honored that this piece was one of the two pieces acquired by the International Quilt Museum for their permeant collection. In 2018, I had a solo exhibit there which featured my work.
What is bringing you solace, or even joy, in this moment?
Gardening (when the seasons permit), Krista Tippet’s On Being podcast, rigorous workouts, and reading keep me grounded. More recent Covid hobbies are cooking from vintage cookbooks which include cocktails and those eating fancy dinners in the dining room during the weekday.
Laura Petrovich-Cheney, Crazy Eights (details), Winter 2018. Salvaged wood collected from natural and man-made disasters. 36” x 36”. Image courtesy of the artist.
Are you reading anything?
Currently I am reading Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. During the beginning of pandemic, I was reading poetry and particularly loved this quote by Maya Angelou- “Nothing can dim the light that shines within you.” It inspired the title for the last piece that I completed before our “stay at home” orders on March 16, 2020 – All the Light Within, 2020, 36” x 36”. The piece was selected for Radical Tradition: American Quilts and Social Changeat the Toledo Art Museum, Toledo, Ohio.
Laura Petrovich-Cheney, Moon Dance, 2020. Salvaged wood collected from natural and man-made disasters. H: 4.5", W: .75", L: 7.5". Image courtesy of the artist.
These sculptural pieces are about structure, growth, and balance. There is no insistence on static perfection. The imperfections of the material reveal an aesthetic promise and are a testament to the material’s fragility and endurance.