Critic’s Choice Award (overall strongest): Awarded to Bailey Barnes for her quilt titled The Heart in Pieces. Dr. Barnes is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics.
Email: bbarnes@uams.edu
Bio: I am a General Pediatrician in the department of Community Pediatrics. I work at the Arkansas Children’s Southwest Little Rock Clinic.
Artist Statement: My primary art form is quilting. I have always been interested in sewing and asked for my first sewing machine for my 8th birthday. My great aunt, Helen, taught me how to quilt when I was 18 years old. I was spending the summer with family in Southeast Missouri and would go over to her house in the afternoons and sew with her. I made two quilts that summer and was hooked! I always laugh because she told me I shouldn’t continue quilting once I started college or I would become known as “that weird quilting girl.” I didn’t listen, of course, and I wish she could see my quilts now, and that I even won an award for one! This quilt was inspired by my wife who is a Pediatric Cardiologist. It uses a technique called foundation paper piecing where small pieces of fabric are sewed initially to a piece of paper and at the end the paper is removed. There are well over 100 pieces of fabric in this piece. The fabric I used is primarily from scraps left to me by my Aunt Helen. I love that I can continue to carry her artform forward with me. Quilting has gained a lot of popularity recently, so I feel like I have just been ahead of the trend and not a weird quilting girl after all!