The Artists

Agnes Stadler

Agnes Stadler was born in Budapest, Hungary, and grew up in Havana, Cuba. She moved to the United States more than 25 years ago, and, after living in Michigan for four years, now makes her home with her family in Edmond, Oklahoma.

Stadler found her creative calling later in life, after a successful career in conference translation and interpreting in Europe. Greatly influenced by the abstract minimalism of Amish quilts, she first took up traditional, then modern quilting in the early 2000s.

A number of workshops with renowned art quilters, such as Betty Busby, Luke Haynes, and Kim Eichler-Messmer, gradually guided her into the path of art quilting. While still making utilitarian modern quilts, Stadler now spends her creative time exploring the many sub-genres of the textile arts.

Stadler has shown works in collaboration with the Qu'aint (quilt and paint) artist group throughout the state of Oklahoma. Her work was juried into the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum's "Log Cabins" exhibition in 2023, and the FAO showcase of 2022 and 2024. Her work received first place at the Fiber Artists of Oklahoma juried show in 2019 and third place in group quilts at Modern QuiltCon in 2018. She has had two solo retrospectives----at the Kolosvilla Gallery, in Révfülöp, Hungary and the Leslie Powell Gallery in Lawton, Oklahoma.

Ann Solinski (co-curator)

South Korean-born and Oklahoma City–based fiber artist Ann Solinski returned to her sewing roots in 2010 after retiring from a successful career as a freelance graphic designer. Drawn to the vibrant aesthetics of modern quilting—marked by bold colors, high contrast, negative space, and graphic composition—she found a new medium that merged her design background with tactile artistry.

In 2013, Solinski joined the Oklahoma City Modern Quilt Guild, connecting with a community rooted in textile tradition and creative fellowship. She began designing and producing original quilt patterns using graphics software, inspired by the intense, color-rich solids that define much of her work. Solinksi is also the founder of Qu'aint (Quilt + Paint), an artist group of cross-pollinating influence between contemporary paintings and modern art quilts.

Solinski exhibited her quilts publicly for the first time in 2018, and viewers found her pieces visually stunning, playful, bold, and innovative. Since then, her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and collaborative projects.

Currently, Solinski is investigating her personal heritage by exploring Korean culture, art forms, and language. As an adoptee raised in the United States, she brings a unique bicultural lens to her work, incorporating textile influences from both Korean and American traditions. 

Beverly Kirk

Beverly Kirk, born in Chickasha, Oklahoma, vividly remembers sitting close to her mother's sewing machine that happily hummed like magic! She sewed clothing for herself during high school, but the joys and hefty business of marriage, motherhood, working, church, and life care took priority status for Kirk. In 1975, she received a B.S. degree from historic Langston University. She later earned her M.Ed. degree from the University of Central Oklahoma.

Following a grief loss in 1997, healing and comfort were found in the structured yet intricate stitchin' and quiltin' with colorful and textured fabric. Retirement in 2016 allowed her to inspire a community of local quilters as a classroom Teaching Artist at the Northeast Health & Wellness Center in Oklahoma City. Kirk is the founder of Oklahoma's first African American quilting guild, Scissor Tales Quilt Guild, and is the founder/president of Oklahoma Community Quilters Network, both based in Oklahoma City. BQuiltin' Studio, a website and blog, was established in 2011 and Kirk currently serves as Studio Art Quilt Associates' Regional Representative of Kansas, Missouri, & Oklahoma.

Kirk specializes in bold, colorful narrative quilts that tell powerful stories, capturing the essence of history and culture. Her work has been exhibited in museums and universities across Oklahoma and the United States, earning her numerous awards and recognition. As a socially conscious artisan, Kirk's commitment extends beyond creating beautiful quilts. Through teaching, chartable work, and guild leadership, she fosters a deep appreciation for quilting's culture significance, while inspiring the next generation of quilters.

Brenda Esslinger

Brenda Esslinger has lived most of her life in central Oklahoma. Even though she did not grow up around quilters, she did grow up in a house full of quilts and loved them from an early age. At the age of four she begged her mother for needle and thread, and hasn't stopped stitching since. During her formative years she taught herself many forms of needlework. This insatiable love of stitching is coupled with nearly as strong of a love for mathematics, especially geometry. Quilting provided her with a way to marry the loves of stitching and math which led her to begin designing and making quilts while still in high school.

After receiving a bachelor's degree in physics education, Esslinger spent several years teaching high school math and science. Then, while studying for a master's degree in meteorology, she worked in education at a science museum. Esslinger has been professionally quilting and teaching since 2002 when, along with her sister, she opened a quilt shop in Edmond, Oklahoma. The shop closed in 2007 at which time she opened her own long arm quilting business----Toadally Awesome Quilting.

Esslinger has won numerous accolades for her work including six Best of Show awards at the Oklahoma State Fair. In 2009 her first book Fabulous Fractures was published, followed by Fracture Frenzy in 2014. Currently, Esslinger has turned her focus to the use of color and value. This is proving to be a never-ending source of inspiration that should keep her busy for years to come.

Debi Wanzer

Debi Wanzer of Oklahoma City considers herself a modern quilter slowly evolving towards the fiber art experience. She is an active member of the Modern Quilt Guild's Oklahoma City Chapter, participating in group shows including the 2018 "Once Old is New" exhibition at ARTSPACE at Untitled. Wanzer has also been featured as a guest instructor at popular quilting workshops where participants learn new quilt block techniques and methods for re-using fabric scraps to keep textiles out of landfills as clothing and textiles are slow to decompose.

Devida Bushrod

Devida Bushrod is the creative force behind Pixel Quilts, an idea that came to life when she realized how much she loved the process of creating this unique style of quilt. A self-taught quilter with nearly two decades of experience and a background in marketing and design, Bushrod made her first pixel quilt in 2008. Over the next 14 years, she explored various quilting techniques and patterns before settling on Pixel Quilts as her favorite process. Now, she exclusively focuses on this distinctive art form. Originally from the United Kingdom, Bushrod now lives with her family in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Putting iconic images through a distinctly modern and pixelated lens, Bushrod's work is driven by a love of bold design and the transformative power of fabric. Best known for the Queen Elizabeth II Quilt, a piece requested by Buckingham Palace, she create quilts that invite viewers to see familiar forms in new ways. Teaching internationally—from the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham to QuiltCon—she is passionate about guiding makers of all levels toward their own pixel-inspired creations, one stitch at a time.

Elizabeth Richards

Elizabeth Richards is a self-taught textile artist living in Oklahoma City. She enjoys the process of dyeing, printing, and painting on fabric, including repurposed fabrics. Hand stitching is often seen in her work, along with occasional mixed media from found objects. Her works have been shown internationally in Australia and France and nationally in galleries across Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas. Elizabeth shares a fiber studio at ARTSPACE at Untitled with friends and is involved with the Mentorship Program at ARTSPACE, teaching and sharing what she has learned in her lifetime of curiosity and play with fabric and stitch. 

Jason Wilson

Jason Wilson started creating art early in life with the influence of his mother to guide him. Early on, he mostly drew with some color supplied by crayons or colored-pencils. In high school, his art teacher introduced him to painting. His first painting was completed during his junior year and it took 1st Place at the Oklahoma State Fair.

Graduating from Hartshorne High School in 1983, Wilson attended Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Oklahoma. After graduating from OBU with his Art Education Degree, he taught art in Oklahoma for 31 years. He's now a professional artist working out of McAlester, Oklahoma.

As a young boy he watched his Native American grandmother design, assemble, and sew his family's quilts. Today, Wilson is a contemporary perceptual artist influenced by his grandmother's quilts, giving new life to old concepts.

Wilson believes that in order to produce perceptual art, the artist must conceive, mathematically calculate, plot, draw, and, finally, paint his design on canvas. Wilson says his designs are about building the painting as much as painting the painting… involving hours of construction. The result is a technically perfect, remarkably flawless finished canvas. By bringing his designs to life, Wilson hopes to delight and inspire others.

Lela O'Dell

As a contemporary folk quilter in pursuit of the perfect hug, Lela O'Dell works primarily with secondhand textiles of first rate softness. She explores texture, color, balance, and materiality within her improvisational designs, prioritizing how a piece feels by the eyes, mind, and body.

For the past eight years, quilt making has been her outlet for artistic self-expression, a therapeutic and intellectual challenge, and her much-loved community. A former HR professional with a Master's degree in Library and Information Science, today she is a full-time mother to three middle and high school-aged children.

O'Dell's quilts have been juried in local and national quilt shows including: QuiltCon 2023, Schweinfurth Art Center's Quilts=Art=Quilts 2023, 2024 and 2025, Fiberworks 2024 and 2025, Houston International Quilt Festival 2025, and Sacred Threads 2025. Her work has also been published by Curated Quilts and Quilt Folk magazines, including the 2025 Quilt Folk calendar and the Quilt Folk special edition of Cats and Quilts.

Mike O'Dell

Mike O'Dell is a certified registered nurse anesthetist working in pediatrics. He is married with 3 children, an author, an artist, a landlord, and the founder of a successful quilt pattern business. As an artist, O'Dell wanted to share the never-ending feeling of accomplishment experienced by making a work of art, so he began writing beginner friendly quilt patterns featuring powerful artwork.

O'Dell and his Oklahoma City-based company, Legit Kits was featured on Shark Tank, Season 16, Episode 9. O'Dell launched his side hustle in 2020 after making his children Star Wars-themed blankets through a process called "foundation paper piecing", which made quilting easier than he'd expected. He decided to start a business of making and selling quilt kits with a similar concept of paint-by-numbers. 

Rachel Janssen

Rachel Janssen is a quilt artist, scientist, and mom living in Edmond, Oklahoma. She earned a degree in biology at the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1987, and completed graduate studies in Molecular Biology at Arizona State University in 1993. Currently Janssen is the Associate Director of Laboratory Research at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City.

Janssen explores different types of fabrics in her textile craft, often repurposing thrifted clothing, deconstructing shirts and jeans to provide a wide range of colors and textures in her quilted pieces. She creates both very small and large quilt works for both utilitarian and artistic uses. 

Sarah Atlee

After 20 years as a professional painter, Sarah Atlee pivoted to focus on quilting as her primary art form. Atlee is known for her colorful and geometric compositions, rich with energy and free-form texture. Using improvisational patchwork and reclaimed textiles, Atlee creates mindful, joyful quilts that are at home on both art gallery walls and a cozy couch.

Working with found, reclaimed, and donated fabrics is crucial to Atlee's practice. She sources materials from what is around her----discarded clothing or other textiles, local thrift store finds, and antique market bargains. Atlee's experience using donated fabrics has taught her that even the unlikeliest materials can work together if you're willing to be surprised. In this way she can keep fabric out of the landfill while breaking barriers around traditional expectations of quilting and fine art. By practicing an ancient art born of necessity, Atlee connects with shared histories while reflecting on self-sufficiency in consumer culture.

Shankari Paradee

Shankari Paradee is an award-winning quilt designer and creator of Sewl Sister. She has a beautiful and unique way of bringing family legacy and vision into her works of art. She has been featured in several publications, including Quilter's World Magazine, and Modish Quilter Magazine. Sewl Sister is also internationally published with Love, Patchwork and Quilting Magazine. Everything is made with an environmentally conscious approach. Shankari creates beauty and sustainability on the planet by using landfill and throw-away fabric. Her mission is to reduce waste, create a slow fashion movement, and inspire upcycling. She continues to create a world of love, power, passion, connection, and joy through the art of sewing!

Shannon Conley

Shannon Conley is an art quilter and fiber artist in Moore, Oklahoma, whose work is informed by her experience as a biologist. She runs a biomedical research lab at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine and ideas for her pieces often arise from scientific research. She has used art quilts and fiber art as her primary medium since 2009, and much of her recent work has focused on interpreting the diversity and interconnectedness of various ecosystems using fabric and stitching. She grew up in southern New Mexico and retains a strong connection to the dry mountains and high desert, areas that frequently appear in her ecology and nature-inspired pieces. Though her practice originates with traditional quilt making, these approaches are expanded to include the use of non-traditional fibers and fiber-like materials, as well as other techniques including painting, dyeing, screen printing, sculpting, and openwork.

Vicki Conley

Vicki Conley's work is born from an ongoing exploration of the natural world, always wondering at its beauty, complexities, and fragility. Through a blend of abstract and representational approaches, she seeks to express the intricate relationships between human experience and the environment. The landscapes, ecosystems, and scientific phenomena Conley encounters during travels inspire the creative process, while her deep-rooted belief in the importance of protecting public lands guides the narrative threads in her art.

By experimenting with different techniques, Conley creates richly textured and colorful work that aims to draw in the viewer and evoke a sense of curiosity and exploration within each piece. Utilizing fabric and stitch she seeks to bridge the gap between traditional and contemporary fiber art, creating a unique and captivating experience for the viewer.

Through color, texture, and form, and the intersection of art, science, and conservation, Conley strives to contribute to the ongoing conversation about the critical importance of protecting our planet's wild places.