Rachel Roggel - Embellished Art Quilts - Biography

Biography

Rachel Roggel is an international artist, lecturer, curator and a button judge from Israel. Her distinguished work is embellished with thousands of buttons, buttonholes and beads. She turns regular buttons, objects usually considered "not worth a button", into conceptual works. The shape, size, texture and material of the buttons are used to express ideas, while buttonholes represent hurt, emptiness but also new opportunities. Her work has been published in books and magazines, and was aired on radio and television programs, including PBS. It was shown in dozens of juried exhibits in Austria, France, Germany, Holland, Japan, South Africa, Grand Cayman Island - BWI, Israel and USA.

Roggel has initiated, via Internet, a virtual pilgrimage to Jerusalem through a unique medium: quilted cloth. Hundreds, from Alaska to Antarctica (!) mailed their signatures and buttons to become part of a series called "The Road to Jerusalem". The first "pilgrim" traveled all the way from Lubbock, TX paying only 64 cents for his ticket...

 

Rachel coordinated, via Internet, an exhibit titled "That's Not A Real Quilt?". Artists from four continents made a work that met the definition of "quilt" but didn't look like one. The exhibit premiered in France (1996) and toured Japan and US.

 

She curated "The Kiss" exhibit by inviting fifty nationally known artists to interpret a theme that has rarely been incorporated by fiber artists. The exhibit will premier at the American Museum of Quilts and Textiles, San Jose, CA. on July 2nd ,1998 It will travel for two years with Exhibit Touring Services of Eastern Washington University.

Her lectures about buttons as an art language, Internet addiction and the virtual pilgrimage signature project were presented to European and American audiences. She prefers Ziploc bags full of buttons instead of a fee, though she already has over 80,000 buttons…

She has returned to Israel from a job assignment in the US, with her husband and her son & daughter.

 

 


"If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter
For always there will be greater or lesser person than yourself"- Desiderata 1692