Gerri Spilka’s latest quilted masterpiece—Myths and Realities: The Bound—an extraordinary piece in her ongoing series inspired by Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and Maureen Murdock’s exploration of the heroine’s arc.

In this powerful work, Gerri combines bold abstraction with the soft, familiar texture of quilting, creating a visual narrative that speaks to the universal stages of life’s journey. Through dynamic forms and a striking grayscale palette with a bold azure highlight, Spilka invites us to reflect on our own personal and collective myths.

The tactile nature of her quilts—hand-dyed fabrics, rhythmic stitching, and intricate, biomorphic shapes—offers a warm, accessible modernism that transforms the everyday act of quilting into an art form that resonates deeply on both a visual and emotional level. Gerri’s approach is as unique as the myths and realities she so vividly brings to life.

Similar to the active force of a painter, Spilka uses a rotary cutter to slice huge swaths of her hand-dyed cotton fabrics, the broad physical strokes producing freeform shapes by intuition. Sometimes beginning with a “small visual delight” such as a curve meeting a straight edge, or the visual resonance of two tones colliding, she begins to compose these pieces into “units.” Additionally, while her imagery is essentially non-objective, her abstract compositions have a certain universality. Spilka tends to work in series, each with evocative and slightly suggestive titles, such as “Night Moves,” “Free Verse,” or “Interactions,” that allow the viewer to free associate.