Audrey Hyvonen works with bright colors, bold contrast, asymmetry, and thinks outside the box. After being raised in Ohio and then raising her own family in Massachusetts, she now lives with her husband in Northwest Montana among handfuls of her cousins.
A creative kid, as a child she was inventing backyard games, crafting witches brews, creating homemade gifts, designing rubber-stamped cards, and cooking. She danced in high school, attended non-traditional Hampshire College where she designed her own course of study, and trained in the martial arts long enough to earn her black belt. She soon after joined a recreational circus school as both student and staff. As excited as a kid in a candy shop, she started quilting as a hobby just after walking into a fabric store for the first time. That was twenty years ago and she has never looked back.
Her first notable projects were an eclectic collection of immersive experiences for the public. She wrote grants and received funding for a traffic-calming stilt-walking quilt parade, a pop-up tour of a quilt in progress, and a city-wide outdoor front porch quilt tour in Massachusetts during COVID. In the midst of the pandemic shutdown, she moved west with the whole family. The relocation brought changes in her community, studio, rhythm, and her art practice. Working now from a side table in a bedroom, she started making more fiber collages and focusing less on community collaborations. Her quilted work has toured internationally through SAQA’s Opposites Attract exhibition, as well as nationally in Threads of Resistance. Locally, she was excited to have a design featured on an electrical box in downtown Kalispell and to have work both accepted and sold in this year’s holiday show at the Radius Gallery in Missoula. She’s eager to continue discovering joy and playfulness in future bodies of work and to find new ways to expand her reach, inviting others to join in the fun.
