Pam RuBert

For as long as she can remember, Pam RuBert has drawn cartoons. Since 2004, she has translated these drawings into art quilts. Her work was juried into Quilt National 2005 and 2007 and the Husqvarna Viking Exhibition “Art Takes Shape” in 2006.

Pam RuBert Web site»

"When I decided to combine the cartoons with the fabric, that's when it just came to life for me. I decided that I needed to go in my own direction and do what I was good at, and that was to draw cartoons and put humor into it. I think that having that different direction has made people notice my work…

Everything that I experience feeds these ideas. I mean they're about mundane things. They're about grocery stores. They're about what it's like to drive down the street and have somebody run you off the road because they're talking on their cell phone or just crazy stuff. I've always got all these ideas that I'm developing in my mind so I would say I have 20 quilts in my head right now. But you only might see one laid out in my studio.

I had a friend once say, ‘you know Pam, you always talk in stories’ and then I realized he's right. I thought about that later when I started doing these quilts because that's what they are. They're little stories; I like the stories.

I don't have one particular message that I try and put into my work. It's more kind of just my view of the world. I'm also a small person in a big crazy world and I feel like things are going on around me all the time that are either irritating or funny or interesting. There's a lot of really wonderful things in my life and there's a lot of terrible things in my life. The things that interest me most are kind of the common everyday things like shopping at the supermarket or trying to park my car in heavy traffic, things like that. I think those are things that are common to a lot of people I know. I'm just putting together these little stories about everyday life basically from an optimistic point of view. I think that there's a lot of good in the world, and sometimes it's a struggle but we have to look for all the little things that give us a good sense of humor and joy in life.”