Corona #2: Solar Eclipse
Sponsored by: Carson-Myre Charitable Foundation
Installed in September 2017
THE QUILT
Corona #2: Solar Eclipse
Size: 76" x 94"
Year made: 1989
Description:
100% cotton fabric, hand dyed and painted, machine pieced and quilted
AQS: Best of Show Purchase Award: 1989 Permanent Collection of The National Quilt Museum of the United States
THE QUILT MAKER
Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry
Port Townsend, WA
Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry is internationally recognized for her award-winning fine-art quilts, which have appeared in hundreds of national and international exhibitions, collections, and publications. Honors include 100 Best Quilts of the 20th Century, Silver Star (lifetime achievement) Award, and selection as one of the thirty most influential quiltmakers in the world. Caryl has lectured and taught in eleven countries around the world and continues to share her knowledge through her publications and her website.
THE MURALIST
Char Downs
Pinecone Art Gallery, 421 N 7th Street, Paducah, KY
Char Downs is an American artist living and working at Pinecone Gallery and Studios, in the Lower Town Arts District of Paducah, Kentucky. Mixed media painting, sculpture, murals, printmaking and installations are the focus of most of the work she creates. She relocated to Kentucky from the San Francisco Bay area in 2004. Her eclectic work has been shown in the Pacific Rim, Europe and the Continental United States. For over thirty years, Char has painted murals in Arizona, Saipan, Hawai’i, California, Florida, and Kentucky.
She was chosen as the Lead Artist for the Quilt City USA® Murals Project. She painted Corona #2: Solar Eclipse, the first quilt mural, for the 2017 second Quilt Show and Contest and the UNESCO Conference for Folk Art and Crafts in Paducah.
FUN FACTS
FUN FACTS
First machine-quilted quilt to win Best of Show at AQS QuiltWeek Paducah in 1989.
Caryl first saw the mural in April 2025 during AQS QuiltWeek. Her retrospective exhibit: A Life in Color – 50 Years of Art Quilts was on display March-October at The National Quilt Museum.
This quilt continues to be relevant, with a solar eclipse in 2024 and another expected in 2044.
Caryl ran a studio/workshop at her residence in Paducah’s LowerTown Arts District (2005- 2014) and was close friends with Lead Artist Char Downs.
