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Photograph by George Sakkestad

Rachel Roggel stands in front of a quilt she created using thousands of buttons, one of her favorite mediums. Roggel began quilting while she still lived in her hometown of Jerusalem, creating several usable pieces before making quilts like the one pictured here.

Local artist pushes buttons

By Steve Enders

When Rachel Roggel lived in Israel, she began quilting simply because the material was available.

The fabric manufacturers in her hometown, Jerusalem, used to get rid of excess fabric that was perfect for quilting.

"It's good stuff," she said. "It's a shame they just threw it away."

After creating functional quilts for her family, she eventually became bored with the hobby and needed an outlet for a creative side that was beginning to emerge.

"Quilting has its limits. It's not that cold! It's boring; it's so geometrical," she said.

She broke from the boredom by making her first "art" quilt. Her son is a Paul Simon fan, so Roggel decided to make a quilt for his 10th birthday that used buttons to write out the lyrics from a Paul Simon song that dealt with the creative process.

That quilt began what is now Roggel's profession. She creates designs out of buttons on her quilts, which represent social and personal issues she believes are important.

The quilts are made from cotton sweatshirt material that is perfect, she said, because it doesn't wrinkle and doesn't have many visible stitches.

Art quilts are different from regular quilts because they're meant to hang on display, while regular quilts are meant to be used for warmth, she said.

Now, Roggel has an impressive collection of thousands of buttons filling the living room in her home near Cupertino.

"I've always loved buttons," she said. "I used to collect buttons from the factory, too."

Roggel also lectures at universities and art schools around the world when traveling with her family. To be admitted to one of her lectures, audience members are required to bring a baggie of buttons instead of money to get a ticket. She now has more than 80,000 buttons.

She also uses beads in her quilts. She said they "add texture and shine."

Quilting is not a lost art, she said. "Look at all the quilting magazines."

"Art quilts have been in the Smithsonian. The people who started it are painters who use fabric for their expression. They're very artistic," she said.

She was involved with one exhibit called "That's Not a Real Quilt," for which she made a quilt containing floppy disks.

"The true definition of a quilt is that it has to have two layers, held together somehow. That makes a floppy disk a quilt," she said.

Her mission has begun to shift from the purely creative and utilitarian to social and political commentary. She's imprinted issues on her quilts such as the reunification of East and West Germany, the Holocaust and religion.

In each work, Roggel subtly transcribes an explanation of what she was trying to achieve, intertwined somewhere with the design.

On a trip to Germany she took just after the reunification, Roggel said she was touched by the differences in the formerly split Germany.

When she came back, she was compelled to do an art quilt on what she experienced there. The quilt was on one side filled with expensive, beautiful buttons. On the other side, she stitched in ragged work shirts with more holes than there were buttons. In the center, she stitched the buttons intermingling with the holes, although there were too many holes for the few buttons on the other side. The two parts signified the reunification of East and West and the lack of material goods and wealth the people in the East had.

"The reason I'm doing it is because people don't expect it at art shows," Roggel said.

Also, during her exhibits, Roggel likes to include a work where visitors can sign portions of a quilt, and then use it in a future work.

At her exhibit in Berkeley, which opened this week, she's encouraging people to bring buttons with them, then she'll allow them to sign a piece of fabric. She'll use the buttons and fabric in a future work, she said.

Another piece she's working on is one using elegant, expensive, gold and black buttons for a quilt of Princess Diana.

"At the turn of the century, the legend goes, if you collected 1,000 buttons, then you would get to marry a prince," Roggel said. "She had it all and married a prince, but wasn't worth a button to him."

Rachel Roggel's quilts can be seen at the New Pieces Gallery in Berkeley April 3-28. For information, call 510/524-6779.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, April 8, 1998.
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