Kazuko Covington
Kazuro K. Covington is an award-winning Japanese quilt artist. She also teaches artistic classes. Soon after she married Stan Covington, she found herself in Brigham Young University student housing staring at blank walls. Lacking funds to buy paint or paint brushes, she used what she had available to her and pieced together scraps of fabric and old clothing and hung it on the walls.
- “My visiting teacher came over one day and said ‘Oh, you made a quilt!’” Covington recalled in a Church News interview. “That’s how I found out what it was, and that was my motivation to learn to quilt.”
Since then, Covington, who lives in Tokyo, Japan, has entered quilts in numerous quilt shows and art competitions. Her quilts were selected each time she entered the Church History Museum’s International Art Competitions. “Touching the Hearts of Many Generations” and “God Speed the Right” each won Merit Awards.
“Touching the Hearts of Many Generations” was created from a damaged antique kimono worn by three generations of women at their wedding ceremonies—gifted to Covington by a close friend. It is bound in silk from a kimono obi the artist inherited from her mother. “The quilt honors the women—their lives and tribulations—and, Covington said, is an ‘expression of the happiness I feel about the eternal family the temple makes possible.'” [1]
- “The title for this artwork, God Speed the Right, is taken from the Church hymnbook. This artistic expression is a prayer for righteousness that our deeds will become a power for good that will shape the world of men as the winds form the waves of the sea. The rock represents a person wearing a kimono in an attitude of prayer during a time of hardship. In my poem, embroidered in Japanese characters on the textile, I pray that the people in my country will live righteously.”[2]
- In 2000 I became convinced that expressing love and virtue is necessary in the turbulent world of today. "Ray's Hope" is an especially meaningful design. It was influenced by the beauty of the movement of waves seen in an art print by Hiroshige. Above a field of raging waves, suddenly the sky opens and a penetrating ray descends from heaven. In this dramatic scene, love is represented by red, faith is represented by blue, and hope is represented by yellow. This quilt expresses the dedication of three generations of men to the word of God.[3]
- [Primary source for this article: The Church News
