Pat Kroth

Originally a Chicago native, fiber artist, Pat Kroth resides in Verona, Wisconsin, just southwest of Madison with her husband and family. Her contemporary art quilts have been featured in many national and international exhibitions.

Pat creates fragment collage quilts comprised of tiny bits of fiber, trapped threads and found objects.These additions sometimes include anything from candy wrappers, safety pins, and computer paper to toysand fortune cookie fortunes.In other abstract works the surface texture vibrates with high contrast, saturated,intense color. With hand-painting, dyeing, and other surface design techniques she transforms cloth, andpaints with thread. One body of work utilizes hand-dyed, then sun-printed fabrics, depicting images from nature: leaves, feathers, shells, and bones. Pat’s sun-printed silk scarves and shawls are created in the sameway, using real natural objects and light to cast shadows on the fabric.Her latest colorful series of improvisational art quilts are created while listening to Gypsy Swing music.

Pat’s work is part of Quilt National 17 and 19-touring through 2021. Her work was included in Art Quilt Elements 2018-Philadelphia,and is in SAQA(Studio Art Quilt Associates) International Touring Exhibits:Season After Season, Dusk to Dawn, Metamorphosis and Concrete and Grasslands. Pat had two solo shows in Spring 2018:Found and Stitched at International Quilt Festival in Chicago and High Thread Count at the Museum of Wisconsin Art on the Lake Gallery in Milwaukee, WI. In 2016 her work was part of the National Quilt Museum’s 25th anniversary show,Gala of the Unexpected.and in the Wisconsin Biennale at the Museum of Wisconsin Art. She created a solo fiber installation“Stuffed”at the Anderson Arts Center in Kenosha, WI January-March 4, 2019.

Pat’s work has been exhibited with Art Quilt Legacie sat the Lincoln Center galleries in Fort Collins,CO,Where she received the award for Creative Innovation. She was part of three person invitational,Three Degrees of Abstraction at the Visions Art Museum in San Diego in April 2015. Pat received the Award for Most Innovative Use of the Medium sponsored by Friends of Fiber Art International at Quilt National 2001 for her monumental art quilt “Revisiting Jackson”. Her work has toured with Art Quilt Masterpieces,Art Quilts:International Wonders of the World,IQF: In Full Bloom, Celebrate Spring, Fiber Artists Coalition, Madison Contemporary Fiber Artists, Professional Art Quilt Associates.She served as the previous regional co-representative for SAQA ILWI,(Studio Art Quilt Associates)and curator for fiber exhibits:The Eye and the Needle,Deeply Rooted, Salvage and Selvage, Stitched Together and Etudes II.Pathada Solo Exhibition,NotJust Fabric and Thread at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah,KY in Fall 2019.Her work will be included in Art Quilt Elements, Wayne Arts Center Wayne, PA 2020.

In addition to solo gallery shows, Pat’s work has been featured in the Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor’s Office, and juried group exhibitions including:Quilt National, World Quilt, Fiber Art International, Art Quilts:Masterpieces, Crafts National, Quilt Fest-Houston, American Quilters’ Society Show,Visions, and Art Quilts Elements, Philadelphia.

Pat’s award-winning contemporary art quilts can be seen in many public and private collections including: The Wisconsin Percent For the Arts Program and the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics.Her work has been shown on the Wisconsin public television special:The Art of Quilting, and she has been featured on Sewing with Nancy.500 Quilts,by Lark Books includes Kroth’s work, as well as 1000 QuiltInspirationsby Quarry Books.Kroth’s artwork was recently featured in Art Quilt Quarterly #13, (Fall 2018).Pattravels with her work to regional fine art fairs, including Art on the Square, Belleville,IL, Milwaukee Lakefront,American Craft Expo.She is represented locally at the Abel Contemporary Gallery in Paoli and Vale Craft Gallery in Chicago. 

After teaching and coaching gymnastics and movement education for over twenty years for infants through adults, it’s easy to take the “girl out of the gym, but not the gym out of the girl.” As a result, when Pat’s not in the studio working, she can be found, on the trail, out on her bike, snow shoes or cross country skis