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 Melody
Gordon-Healy is a daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother
and a fabric artist. She lives in an early 20th century home
in Baltimore, Maryland.
As a young girl, Melody loved to make clothes
for her dolls. As a young woman she became fascinated with
the history of quilt making and with the methods used in dating
these early works of art. She began to receive invitations
to give slide lectures on varied quilting topics. At the same
time she began to hear a challenge from her husband”
“when will you make a quilt?” And thus the fun
began.
Quilt Making: as with many
quilt makers her early quilts were done for her family and
she stitched scraps of family clothing into works which narrated
history and marked family events. Seminars, however, with
Michael James broadened her field of interest. She turned
to her own African-Puerto Rican-American roots for themes
and objects which could be translated into fabric beauty.
 Travel:
as the borders of her interest widened she traveled with a
quilting friend into the Amish country of Pennsylvania to
learn their use of fabric, color, design. Her Amish quilts
won her an invitation from the sister-state committee of Maryland
to travel to Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan to teach Amish and
Baltimore Album quilting, and this same committee commissioned
her to quilt “The Spirit of
the Kami” for the Governor of the prefecture. Her
success in Japan led to further invitations to conduct workshops
in Bangkok, Thailand, in Singapore, in Newcastle, England
and in Cork, Ireland, the ethnic home of her husband. Melody’s
quilts hang in all these countries and in Indonesia, Belgium,
and many U.S. cities. Recently, she was commissioned to make
two quilts for Loyola College in Maryland; this commission
she cherishes since it came from her hometown.
Not only has Melody had the privilege of bringing
her art to several countries but she has learned much from
each area which she loved, visited, or worked in: Amish discipline,
Baltimore jazz, New York hutsba, Yokahama stitching, Bali
batiking, Chang-Mai orchards, Tibetan tent doors, Haitian
voodoo, Asiago flags, Ashanti dolls, West African masks, Seminole
fur, feathers, and beads.
Teaching: although Melody is
primarily a quilt maker, her husband often describes her as
a teacher at heart. Although she has lectured and run workshops
in Asia and Europe yet it is in the Baltimore area where she
has done most of her teaching: Loyola College in Maryland,
the Community College of the City of Baltimore, Baltimore
City’s Commission on Aging through the Maryland Institute
of Art, the Maryland Historical Society, the Baltimore Museum
of Art and local churches and civic groups.
In her quilting, fabric work, lecturing and
teaching Melody reflects what the National Museum of African
Art in Washington said about an Ethiopian sculptor, namely,
that artists who travel or live in exile become “individuals
(who) are released from the constraints of tradition and are
often able to gain a greater sense of self and artistic vision
from the knowledge of multiple cultures, histories, and realities.”
Melody has been fortunate to move across rural, urban, national,
and international borders. Her journeys have enriched her
works: “how did this poor girl from Baltimore get to
travel so far?”
- Co-Founder of Baltimore City Quilters
- Historian for the Baltimore Heritage Quilters
Guild
- President of the Loyola College Quilting
Guild
- Consultant for the Maryland Historical Society
- Lecturer and Instructor at Loyola College
In Maryland
- Teaching
- Commissioned works in Fiber
- Lectures, Workshops, Demonstrations in the
mode just mentioned
- Consultations on Group and Community Projects
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