20220630-HOWARDMAGAZINE - Flipbook - Page 44
BY MIKE KLINGAMAN Howard Magazine
S
ewing machines were tailor-made for Joyce
J. Ritter. Once a nun, she made he own habit.
Later married, she fashioned her wedding
dress.
“Fabric is in my genes,” said Ritter, 74, of Ellicott City.
“Thread is wrapped around my DNA. If I’m not making
stuff, I get really [irritable]. Early on, if I got cranky,
my husband would say, ‘Will you go sew something?’ ”
Nowadays, Ritter is hooked on quilts, but not the
type one nestles in at night. Her quilts are works of art,
vertical treasures made to hang on walls like the oil
paintings they favor. That’s not to say they don’t evoke
the same response as the quilts in which one snuggles.
Her creations run the gamut from those resembling
feathers to full-blooming flowers. One is of a rustic
horseshoe hanging on the wall of a barn. Another is
a likeness of a wooden sand fence at the beach, the
sunlight flirting with the shadows through the slats.
“These are comfort quilts,” Ritter said. “A woman
who bought one told me that, one night, she had a
panic attack, got up, saw the quilt — which looked like
a painting of big red leaves — and stroked it until her
attack died down. I can’t solve all of the problems of
the world, but if I can bring someone a sense of peace,
consolation or encouragement, then I’ve done a really,
really good thing.”
What she doesn’t stitch are art quilts of people or
animals, but she’s working on it.
“I don’t yet feel competent to do living creatures,”
Ritter said. “I did [quilt] one dove, but she looked
constipated.”
Her workshop is a niche at the Howard County Center for the
Arts, home to 14 professionals including painters, photographers
and artists whose mediums include stained glass and mosaics. Six
days a week, Ritter toils in her studio for six hours a day, sewing
machine humming and hands flying despite a left wrist broken in a
fall several months back.
“Nothing can stop me from quilting,” she said. “It’s very meditative.
It’s my happy place.”
Callouses are a given.
“I could rob banks and they’d never find my fingerprints,” said
Ritter, a Baltimore native who who started life as a nun. Six years
later, Sister Mary Joyce left the convent, married and worked various
jobs, retiring in 2000 to care for her ailing father. Quilting beckoned.
“I needed to do something with my hands,” she said. Ritter joined
the Faithful Circle Quilters Guild, in Columbia, to hone her skills,
sewing practical quilts before tackling artistic ones in 2015. Her works
hang in the HorseSpirit Arts Gallery in Savage.
The quilts, which have sold for $250 to $1,500, have hung
everywhere from the Baltimore mayor’s office in City Hall to BWI
Airport. Most are displayed prominently in homes, though one quilt,
depicting a fragmented star, landed on a bathroom wall.
“It matched the owners’ color scheme,” Ritter said.
44 | SUMMER 2022 | howardmagazine.com
A piece entitled “Passages” (2022), by quilter Joyce J. Ritter.
A piece entitled “Goodbye” (2022), by Ritter, resident artist at Howard
County Center for the Arts. Her artwork is on display at Horse Spirit
Gallery in Savage. PHOTOS BY KARL MERTON FERRON
A detail of a piece entitled “Goodbye” (2022).