Park service will pull in quilt show for centennial

The National Park Service here has landed a traveling quilt show for July 1-4, 2016, as part of a celebration of its 100th anniversary.

Administrative Officer Janet Valen at the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area said the traveling exhibit has 177 quilts depicting the flora, fauna and landscape of the country’s 59 major national parks. Quilts depict subject matter from Arcadia to the U.S. Virgin Islands, from Gates of the Arctic to American Samoa and others in between. Valen stated that the quilts are made by some 148 fiber artists nationally and internationally known, with a few new quilt artists involved.

A book is planned showing all the quilts in the exhibit and it will be published this next spring.

The Centennial NPS Quilt Show will be featured in the new school elementary gym, hours to be decided later.

Cindy Grisdela of Reston, Virginia, gleaned a plan for her landscape from a recent visit to Wrangell-St. Elas National Park in Alaska. Regina Grewe of Kamen, Germany, fondly remembers the lush green plants, unlike anything she had ever seen, surrounding her on a hike through Olympic National Park. Ellen Icochea of Alexandria, Virginia, worked from a fond memory of a trip with friends to Grand Canyon to recreate an art quilt of a mule she remembers, traversing the trails, as her group traveled down into the canyon. And Debbie Dempsey of Oak Hill used her technical knowledge and abilities to create intricate layers of living soil from Arches National Park. That’s just a few notes about the quilt artists.

The traveling exhibit will kick off at a Houston, Texas, venue later this year and will travel all over the United States.

The NPS here acquired the quilt show with the help of Marlene Oddie, who owns KISSed Quilts, a store in Grand Coulee. Oddie, who was at a quilt event and found out about the centennial traveling show, helped with the request for it to visit the Grand Coulee area.

The local NPS will also feature a naturalization ceremony on the actual date the National Park Service was founded, Aug. 25. This ceremony, honoring new United States citizens will be held Aug. 25, 2016, at Fort Spokane. Details of this ceremony are being worked out.

In another feature of the centennial year, graduating seniors at Hunters High School who have been participants of the NPS “River Mile” program will be honored.

Valen said that the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce will hold a local quilt contest next year and that some of those quilts will likely hang as part of the show. “It will depend on how much room we have,” Valen stated.