Paula Nadelstern: Kaleidoscopes and Quilts

December 6, 2024–March 2, 2025

Paula Nadelstern is acclaimed internationally for her innovative and complex quilt designs inspired by the bilateral symmetry of kaleidoscopic images. Her kaleidoscopic designs burst with visual dynamism as she artfully arranges an abundance of light, color, form, and motion into a rich and cohesive picture. For nearly forty years, Nadelstern has dedicated herself to seamlessly blending the concept of a kaleidoscope with the techniques and materials of quiltmaking. Freeing herself from a conventional sense of fabric orderliness, she seeks a random quality to imitate the succession of chance interlinkings and endless possibilities synonymous with kaleidoscopes. 

Employing a distinctive approach that obscures, rather than defines, the seams, her piecework creates seemingly unlimited patterns and permutations. With the ability to find patterns in anything, everywhere she goes, her quilt designs are often inspired by her travels and the places that are special to her. The ornate ceiling of Prague's Spanish Synagogue and the architectural Brooklyn Bridge (in a private collection) are two places that have become the subjects of her quilts. Nadelstern says that "symmetry and serendipity laced with abundant color and pattern" are at the heart of her quilting. 

This exhibition celebrates the life's work of Paula Nadelstern, a true pioneer in the world of quilt design. Nadelstern, who still lives on the same block where she grew up in the Bronx, has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and The Bronx Council on the Arts. She was included in Twentieth Century's 100 Best American Quilts, and her designs were featured in the American Folk Art Museum's first one-person exhibition highlighting the work of a contemporary quilt artist (2009). Nadelstern is the author of six books and has designed over 31 collections for Benartex, Inc. 

Artist Statement

For almost forty years, the state-of-the-art kaleidoscope has not only been my design inspiration, it's also been my classroom. Analyzing not only what a scope is but also what it isn't has steered me in lots of valuable directions. I've learned to manipulate physical properties like rhythm and line to inject a feeling of motion into an otherwise static image. But it is the unique qualities synonymous with the kaleidoscope personality that I'm always trying to get to know better. Surprise. Magic. Change. Chance. In order to conjure an instant of luminous and fleeting spontaneity, I've got to trust in symmetry, rely on detail, commit both random and staged acts of color, and understand that the whole will always be greater than the sum of its parts.