Dilla Gooch Tingley shows some of the pillow she’s made. On the wall behind her is a quilt titled “Portraiture a la Matisse.” Click image to enlarge.
These are not your grandmother’s quilts.
Longtime Lincoln resident and quilter extraordinaire Dilla Gooch Tingley draws inspiration from well-known artworks to craft textiles with wildly varying textures and topics — and often a dash of humor. You see a selection hanging in Bemis Hall’s map room through March, with an opening reception on Thursday, March 19 at 3:00pm.
“I’m most delighted in my work when I can take an artistic subject and reinterpret it in an interesting way,” she says. Many of her quilts are based on famous paintings, such as “The Next Supper,” a takeoff on da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” where the dinner guests are religious figures including Buddha, Ganesh, Jesus, and Mother Theresa.
Then there’s “Windows on Matisse,” a 3×3 arrangement of Matisse paintings with windows, and a collage of works by Picasso. She’s also made quilts based on Inuit art, Escher, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Gauguin, “but Monet is too hard,” she says. Often there’s a humorous twist, such as a piece based on “Luncheon on the Grass” by Edouard Manet — except the gathering of picnickers now includes Paddington Bear and Winnie the Pooh.
Some of Tingley’s quilts are based on art forms other than painting, such as “Architextural,” a collection of famous modern buildings including the Sydney Opera House, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and the Transamerica building in San Francisco. As a surprise gift to Ellen Sisco, Lincoln’s assistant librarian who retired in 2014, she made a quilt with some of Sisco’s favorite literary characters and books such as Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, “The Owl and the Pussycat,” “The Wizard of Oz,” and Wallace and Gromit. Another quilt called “Ex Libris” showing characters including Babar, Humpty Dumpty, and Madeline hangs in the children’s room at library. And decidedly non-literary is “Branded,” an array of brightly colored logos of Cheez-Its, Green Giant, Morton Salt, and more.
Tingley’s quilts aren’t always rectilinear, either. There’s “Damn Everything But the Circus,” whose top has the billowy shape and texture of a circus tent, and a round piece depicting a crying sun called “Sol Says Sorry” (caption: “My life-enabling warmth is causing so much grief — I cry for you”) that was included in the global warming exhibit.
Tingley, who is self-taught, didn’t start out on an artistic path. She earned a degree in physics at Vassar and then worked in a research laboratory in Harvard University’s Division of Engineering and Applied Physics, “though it was clear I wasn’t destined to be a physicist,” she says.
Starting in 1977, she worked at a variety of jobs at Polaroid. “I started as a supervisor on the production line making SX70 film, so I told people I was a film producer. Doesn’t that sound more interesting than saying you worked on a factory floor?” she says.
In 1988, she took early retirement from Polaroid, “and I bought a sewing machine on my way home from my last day of work,” she says. She started by making pillows and eventually graduated to quilts. Her process involves finding interesting fabrics, then sketching a design, cutting out appliques, and ironing them onto pieces of fabric to guide her in cutting. When choosing a subject or theme, she’s guided foremost by practicality. “Generally when I see the image, my first thought is: how easy would that be to render?” she says.
The post-career phase of her life also included working as a business manager for a Framingham youth guidance center and volunteering in numerous capacities in Lincoln including as a member of the Planning Board and as president of the League of Women Voters.
In her former Lincoln home on Laurel Drive, Tingley’s workshop took up most of the basement and featured dozens of cubbies for fabric and a hanging quilt rack that her late husband Fred made for her. She downsized to a Ryan Estate condo after his death in 2022 but still has room on her walls for many of her quilts along with a bedroom repurposed as a workroom. Not surprisingly, her collection of fabrics includes few of the familiar cotton scraps often seen in American quilts. For textures and background, she’s used everything from batik to silk to African mud cloth (“Demoiselles d’Mud Cloth” based on the similarly titled Picasso painting).
In 2004 she organized a group to make a quilt to celebrate Lincoln’s 250th anniversary. It features scenes from Lincoln’s history, including the Lewis Street pickle factory and a boathouse on Sandy Pond, and now hangs in the Tarbell Room at the library. Since about 2024, she’s been a member of the Lincoln Quilters., whose members work on quilts together. They recently exhibited in the Lincoln Public Library and held a silent auction of quilts that raised nearly $8,000 for charity.
Tingley’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibits at the Depot Square Gallery in Lexington, including a 2007 show called “HOT: Artists Respond to Global Warming.” Her submissions included the slyly humorous “We Love Our Cars” with colorful background landscapes overrun with cars full of monkeys, and “Venice of Massachusetts” showing a Venetian gondola in front of a State House at the top of Beacon Hill island surrounded by water.
One of Tingley’s volunteer roles is chair of the Council on Aging & Human Services board of directors, and she’s been deeply involved for years in efforts to create a new home for the COA, most recently as a member of the Community Center Building Committee. That work will reach fruition when the community center opens sometime in 2027 — and one of its interior walls will feature the quilt of Lincoln buildings that currently hangs in the living room at Bemis Hall.
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