Lindsay Grenier - USA

“Lindsay grew up in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania steeped in history and the traditional hand sewn quilts of the Amish. Her Aunt was a master quilter who ran an “art camp” for Lindsay and her cousin every summer of their childhood. These were the seeds of her eventual drift to quilting as an art form. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon, surrounded by the beauty of the pacific northwest and a vibrant art and maker culture.

Although Lindsay has had a lifelong love of art, design, and traditional textiles, for the past twenty years she has been a midwife and public health expert with a career in global maternal health. Her favorite perk of that work has been the ability it gave her to seek out and explore heritage textiles from around the world. 

A few years ago Lindsay began developing her own textile practice. She began with quilting in part because she’s always had a love/hate relationship with it – appreciating the design, craftsmanship and skill while often left uninspired by the fabric and unable to envision them in her own home. Her textile practice thus began in an effort to create pieces that would bridge the gap between appreciation for the traditional form and an aesthetic that would speak to a modern space filled with heritage craft.

This endeavor has led to her near exclusive use of natural, self -dyed linen, hemp, and silk in pieces that employ traditional quilting techniques while moving away from their traditional utility. In her work she contemplates questions of craft vs art, appreciation vs appropriation, freedom through constraints, and the role of perfectionism. 

At XTANT you can see her interest in interdisciplinary participatory methods on display in the exhibit piece “Huacas for a new world”. This piece re-envisions 25 individual drawings from the  2025 XTANT leadership cohort depicting a mix of hopes for the future and what they were present to at the end of their time together in one cohesive message.”

-Taken from Lindsay Grenier