Messenger - Vol. 4, No. 3, Page 4 1995 Mosaic quilts of many colors A quilt is an apt metaphor for the career of fiber artist Iran Lawrence, Delaware '79. Her professional life is composed of complementary, distinct pieces-her well-established art quilt commissions and her fledgling interior design firm, her practical business sensibility and her need to gamble artistically. Lawrence, a 1995 recipient of the UD's Presidential Citation for Outstanding Achievement, creates the kind of quilts that private clients put on walls, corporate clients put in lobbies and museums put behind glass. Lawrence says she creates her art out of cloth instead of paint or metal because she believes "fiber and textiles are very seductive and cause everyone to relate instantly to them." Her quilts are mosaics of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of pieces of cotton fabric that Lawrence dyes by hand to achieve a subtle spectrum of intensity in each color. More than 300 hues are in Lawrence's rainbow. The graded colors evoke sensations of movement and light, she says, "bringing visual excitement, harmony and warmth" to corporate, residential and architectural settings. Many of Lawrence's designs play with the geometric juxtapositions of delicate rectangles and squares to create their effects. One of her breakthrough pieces, Maelstrom, is an arrangement of color currents that initially draw the viewer into a whirlpool, then ebb into tranquil waves. Lawrence's quilts have been placed in the board room of DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Co.; the national treasurer's office of the Sears, Roebuck Co.; and the lobby of JMB Corp.'s Jefferson Plaza. Lawrence's most famous clients are President and Mrs. Clinton. They selected one of her more traditional pieces for their private quarters at the White House. Lawrence makes a special effort to guarantee customer satisfaction. First, clients are invited to look at Lawrence's portfolio while she canvasses the proposed environment for the art quilt, checks design and color preferences and considers the requested size. (Her quilts range from 4-by-5 feet to 6-by-14 feet.) Lawrence has appeared several times on national television, won the 1986 American Textile Competition sponsored by the 3M Corp. and the Museum of American Folk Art in New York and has had photographs of her quilts featured in books and magazines as well as area newspapers. Her work has been exhibited in Japan and in more than 20 galleries in the United States, including the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the American Museum of Quilts and Textiles in San Jose. At the height of her success, Lawrence enrolled in a degree program in interior design at Drexel University in Philadelphia, and after her graduation, was awarded a full scholarship to pursue a master of fine arts degree at Temple University in Philadelphia. In one of her seminars, she was asked to make a class presentation on a famous textiles artist. Her assignment? Iran Lawrence. Some of her graduate school professors were baffled by Lawrence's participation in programs that presumably would prepare her for a career she already enjoyed. Lawrence was equally puzzled by anyone's underestimation of the need for more knowledge. "My professional experience has proven to me that behind every good artist, regardless of his or her medium, is technical expertise," she says. People also are perplexed by her choice of an undergraduate degree in economics. "People ask me about that all the time," Lawrence says. While she fondly recalls her art electives at UD, particularly the drawing classes she had with Charles Rowe, she considers studying economics at her "mini-Harvard" a wise choice. "Economics is the base of life. It all boils down to economics," she says. "For you to function in any business, knowing how the system works is a major tool to have. The degree of success I enjoy is because of my business training. It gave me my solid foundation." Now, with her degrees and her design experience, Lawrence has established an interior design firm. The decision to open the business was delayed for a few months, however, while Lawrence concentrated on overcoming an unexpected obstacle. In December 1993, she broke her neck while jumping a horse. Though doctors doubted Lawrence would survive the injury, let alone recover motor skills, she says she "trampolined" back to health by July. Lawrence has been back at work for almost a year, taking on opportunities as they present themselves. Told that a color ad for her new design firm would cost approximately $6,500, Lawrence called on two friends for technical advice, made three trips to the marble yards for just the right piece of pink rock, made three trips to florists for perfect, rosy alstromeria lilies and selected the finest of her own mauve swatches to accentuate one of her delicately watercolored sample floor plans. Her full-page ad, produced for $268, has begun appearing in magazines. -Priscilla Goldsmith, Delaware '78, '85M