Rebekah S Clark
Rebekah is a self-taught quiltmaker/artist living in Portland, Oregon. She began making quilts in the early ‘70s, while still in college, but after moving to her Cazenovia and Syracuse, NY in the 80s, she was fortunate to meet other art quiltmakers and was exposed to quilt artists from around the country at the summer conference: Quilting-by-the-lake. She was encouraged to enter juried shows, and competitions.
Though she never stopped making art, she took a hiatus from promoting it, earning a Masters’ Degree in Social Work from Syracuse University in 1995, to support her family. She retired from a rewarding career in Hospice, due to head/neck Cancer, in 2018.
As a child, Rebekah was surrounded by thread-benders (her mother’s witty word for them); Her mother and grandmother with needlepoint and embroidery, and her mother knitted sweaters socks and mittens for the whole family. She also sewed dresses for Rebekah and her sisters. Her mother allowed Rebekah to use her Singer Featherweight sewing machine as soon as she showed an interest, around age 7. Rebekah loved fabric and began collecting it around the same time.
After graduating from high school, Rebekah took a trip to Wyoming to work on a cattle ranch. She met Miriam Barlow, “a Grande-dame of the range”. Miriam “Mim” shared her knowledge of traditional quilt-making, exposed her to the family’s collection of quilts; made by herself and the other women in her family (all by hand and very finely made), and several books about the history of quilting in America.
There, in the winter of 1972, in Pinedale, Wyoming, Rebekah realized that she wanted to make quilts, and that making quilts might fulfill her lifelong urge to make art.