HEREABOUTS virginia burroughs
When Peri Irish Switzer was growing up in small towns in Indiana, she had no idea she would one day be a fiber artist, or use the skills of the women in her family as an art form.
“The women on my father’s side did quilting and rug hooking, and my mother sewed,” Switzer said. “When I was in high school and college I sewed all my own clothes, and later I made all my children’s clothes.”
Her college degree was in library science, not art, and she came to Dayton with her husband and three children in the early 1980s to take a job as librarian at Wright State University.
Her entry into art started with one of her daughters. “When she was in college, she wanted to make a quilt. I helped her make several, but then she stopped and I went on.
“The traditional, classic quilting eventually turned into art quilting and then into potholders,” Switzer said.
She joined the Dayton Visual Art Center in the ’80s when it was housed in at the old Biltmore Hotel, and her first sale was two quilts to Pam Houk, one of the founders and the first director of DVAC. “That was such a thrill,” Switzer said.
Since then, her quilts have been purchased by and hang in such places as Westminster Church, Children’s Medical Hospital, the Trotwood branch library, Culture Works, and in the Physician Office Building at Kettering Medical Center.
She’s also made quilts for her children and five grandchildren. “They think of them as art, but still use them as quilts,” said Switzer. And, she’s mended other people’s family quilts.
All of her fiber art was done “whenever I could” while her children were home and until she retired from WSU several years ago, after 30 years as a librarian.
A front bedroom of her North Dayton home serves as her studio, “and every day I’m working on some kind of fiber project,” she said.
She’s still a member of DVAC, and also belongs to the Miami Valley Quilt Network, Creative Quilt Guild, the Dayton Knitting Guild and the Art Quilt Network which meets in Columbus twice a year.
Her potholders were a big hit at last year’s DVAC ARTtoBUY holiday sale, although her most recent venture is knitting.
“I learned to knit when I was 19, but didn’t have the time when I was working,” she said. “Since I came back to it after retirement, I found there’s been a revolution in knitting, with new fibers and techniques.
“I like to take patterns and do something else with them, like changing the fiber recommendations,” Switzer said.
Switzer never realized the crafts of her female ancestors would play such a role in her life. “I never thought of being an artist, but it’s wonderful,” she said.
Contact this columnist at (937) at 276-4441 or vburroughs@woh.rr.com.