Beads, Butterflies and Sustainability Featured in Artwork of Stark State College Instructor

Yih Yee Wong left Malaysia in 1995, but she brings Asian fabric, print designs and print techniques to an American craft – quilting. She also has tapped into the Midwest aesthetic of reuse, adding embellishments that have seen a previous life.

Wong, a Stark State College English instructor, will showcase her originally designed quilts and jewelry and close-up photos of her favorite creatures, butterflies, in the exhibit “Beaded Allure & Butterflies” featured Nov. 15 – Dec. 31 in the Stark State Art Gallery located in the Student Center at 6200 Frank Ave. NW in Jackson Township.    An opening reception featuring organic food created by Wong will be Weds., Nov. 16 from 5 – 7 p.m. in S201 in the Student Center.

“Since I was a young girl, I have always been concerned about the environment and trying to reuse, reduce and recycle,” says Wong. “The batting material for my quilts is either 100% organic cotton or rayon spun from bamboo, but the former is less polluting to the environment as cotton is the most heavily sprayed crop in the world.”

Wong, the winner of numerous academic and professional awards, holds a bachelor’s degree in music with a minor in English literature from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, a master’s degree in English literature from Penn State University and is working on a PhD in English literature from Ohio State University with a dissertation on “Educational Polemics: Women Writers and Intellectual Androgenesis, 1660-1800.”

She balances cerebral pursuits with the creative. “I design all of my quilts to feature a before-and-after effect where parts of the fabric are embellished and parts are not,” she said. “So much of what’s meaningful in life is made up of before-and-after moments – graduation, marriage, the birth of a child.”

Her jewelry also features including glass beads, pendants, reclaimed stones, vintage buttons, Swarovski crystals and earrings. “I am always searching at antique stores, estate sales, vintage shops and flea markets for odds and ends that I can combine with materials I buy from craft stores to create one-of-a-kind pieces,” Wong said. Each item of jewelry she sells is placed in a handmade ribbon pouch and a hand-folded origami gift box.

Her butterfly photos are just as much a labor of love as her quilts and jewelry. Butterflies are “meaningful creatures” whose four stages in their life cycle “mark the necessary journey through the process of fully becoming what they are meant to be,” she said. “These “fragile winged creatures teach us that we do not have to be crippled by fear of the unknown or the many uncertainties in life because change is a natural part of life.