Bette Ventrella Quilts on Display.

Bette Ventrella has a twinkle in her eye when she talks about making quilts. It is obvious that everything about the process, the art, the completion of a project makes her happy. She also enjoys the colorful intricacies of the finished product, even though she doesn’t have room to spread them out so she can look at them.

So begins Barbara Lawlor's story on Bette, featured in a recent issue of The Mountain-Ear.


It's a great story with all the detail a reader enjoys about the life of an artist.

In this case, detail is the right word to use: Bette's work is Detail writ large. Her larger works are done with hand stitchery, one needlepoint at a time repeated thousands of times, patiently and meticulously.

In a more contemporary vein, she composes mountain scenes completed with machine stitching, the resulting quilts being a warm blend of fabric and landscape, inviting you into the scenes to get lost in our beautiful mountain terrain.

Bette's work is on display these days at the Nederland Community Presbyterian Church Fellowship Hall, open most days during the week and for sure on Sunday mornings. It's part of the Mountain Community Music and Arts program, which brings the arts to our mountain community through concerts and showings.

We should count our blessings that we live in a community that supports the arts and nourishes the artists among us.