Line, Pattern and Texture
By Pat Kerns
Walk into Alliance Art Gallery in August and you will find the art works of guest artist Elizabeth Swick and gallery artist Ann Miller Titus, two creatives whose works are full of lines, patterns, and textures.
Elizabeth Swick is a Quincy native whose art education journey has taken her from the halls of Quincy High School to the classrooms of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, IL where she graduated with a degree in film. She then traveled to California where she worked with the American Film Institute student films, creating props and backdrops. When she decided to continue her education she returned to Carbondale for her Masters Degree. After experiencing a variety of art media like glass, pottery, jewelry making, blacksmithing and other three dimensional media she declared her major in glass, concentrating on lost wax casting. After graduation she returned to Quincy and to ceramics because it was easier to set up a pottery studio at her home.
Elizabeth finds inspiration in the patterns of nature, those that occur instantaneously as well as those created by time. Much of her current hand built clay pieces include topographical patterns where she can invent little worlds that don’t exist.
Elizabeth has worked for the Quincy Art Center for 10 years in a variety of roles but currently serves as the Director of Exhibitions, a role she very much enjoys. She finds it difficult to find the time to create her art as much as she would like, especially with a two year old. But the ideas continue to come and she hopes to work again with glass in the future.
Sometime last year, Ann Miller Titus began reading Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower and the first words of the book jumped off the page: “All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you”. This was just the inspiration Ann had been looking for to extend her current series of fiber art on the theme of Connection.
Ann’s latest works attempt to show how we connect to each other and ththe transformations that take place when we do so. She begins by painting water soluble inks onto cotton, focusing on abstract, organic shapes, then using hand embroidery to more clearly define the shapes and to create spaces where the elements intersect and interact with each other. Often the finished ink and embroidery pieces serve as “sketches” for larger art quilts, utilizing the precision of hand appliqué and complicated machine quilting to suggest worlds that are connected, interdependent and constantly in motion.
Ann is one of the twenty local artists/owners of Alliance Gallery where she also serves as manager. Born and raised in Hamilton, IL, she attended Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, obtaining a Masters Degree in Audiology. When her friends started having babies in the 1980’s, she put the sewing skills learned at her Grandmothers’ knees to use, making baby quilts. While her quilts today hold little resemblance to what we normally think of when considering quilts, they are made in exactly the same manner. Ann values and celebrates this connection with women and their quilts from generations past.
Ann exhibits her work regionally and has received numerous awards including the 2012 City of Quincy Arts Award, the 2022 City of Quincy Purchase Award at QFest in Quincy, First Place in the 2022 Mary S. Oakley and Lee Lindsay Area Artists Showcase at the Quincy Art Center and Best of Show in the 2024 Historic Shaw Art Fair. in St. Louis.
An opening reception for these artists will be held on Saturday, August 9, 2025 from 4:00 until 8:00. The artists will be giving a talk about their work at 6:00 pm. There will be a free drawing to win a piece of Ann’s work at 6:30 pm. You do not have to be present to win…just stop in the gallery anytime on that day and fill out a drawing ticket. This reception coincides with the Downtown Hannibal Art Walk, featuring eleven venues where you can experience fine art and fine craft from regional artists.
