Drive into the Sunset
2017–2024
Cotton fabric · Piecing · Domestic-machine quilting
53 × 73 inches
Overview
Drive into the Sunset is a modern art quilt inspired by the bold geometry and graphic landscapes of Allan D’Arcangelo. Strong horizontal lines, saturated color bands, and a sense of forward motion come together to evoke an endless highway disappearing into the horizon.
This piece explores movement, optimism, and nostalgia—capturing that familiar feeling of driving west as the sky shifts from daylight to dusk. Clean piecing and intentional quilting lines reinforce the graphic structure while adding depth and texture.
Finished quilt showing the completed composition and quilting.
Close-up of the quilting where the warmth of the sunset transitions into the quieter movement of the clouds.
Detail view of the quilting, emphasizing stitched road lines and surface texture.
Detail view of the quilting on the back, showing the stitched road lines.
Detail view of the quilting on the back, showing the stitched road lines.
Work in progress during the quilting stage of Drive into the Sunset.
Work in progress during the quilting stage of Drive into the Sunset.
Kelley and I outside my solo exhibition Abstractions in Fabric at the Castleton Bank Gallery in Rutland, Vermont, 2018. Drive into the Sunset was exhibited as a completed top at the time.
Finished quilt top prior to quilting, showing the completed composition and color relationships before stitching adds texture and depth.
Early sketch exploring the core composition and emotional direction of Drive into the Sunset.
2026 – A Vermont Quilt Sampler, Billings Farm & Museum, Woodstock, VT
Drive into the Sunset installed at Billings Farm & Museum during A Vermont Quilt Sampler, 2026. A gray road leads toward multicolored rays beneath a purple sky, against a timber gallery wall.
Gallery view of A Vermont Quilt Sampler, 2026, with Drive into the Sunset on the rear wall. Quilts fill the museum’s timber-framed exhibition space.
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Year: Begun 2017 · Completed 2024
Status: Completed
Dimensions: 53 × 73 inches
Materials: 100% cotton solid fabrics; batting and thread to confirm
Techniques: Piecing; domestic-machine quilting
Piecing: Kenny Smith
Quilting: Kenny Smith on a domestic sewing machine
Finish: Faced
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My work lives in the space between fantasy and reckoning. Drive into the Sunset draws on the bright visual language of Pop Art and Americana to reflect the myths we grow up with: the open road, the Hollywood ending, the glowing promise of something better just beyond the horizon. But beneath the vivid color and bold pattern is a quieter, more difficult truth. Most endings aren’t beautiful. We hope they are. We tell ourselves they might be.
This quilt isn’t an escape. It’s a confrontation. A dream stitched alongside the knowledge that for many, the road doesn’t lead to freedom. It ends without resolution, sometimes without dignity. In this way, my work is less about closure and more about acknowledgment. Of longing. Of grief. Of the deep human desire to be held in love at the end, even if the journey was never fair.
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Drive into the Sunset began in March 2017 after a conversation with fellow fabric artist Jack Edson, where we discussed landscape imagery and bold, graphic compositions. During that time, I was also thinking about the punchy, simplified landscapes of painter Allan D’Arcangelo, and how those ideas might translate into fabric rather than paint.
The quilt top was completed in the summer of 2017. While I was confident in the composition, I wasn’t yet sure how I wanted to quilt it, so the piece was set aside. The completed top was exhibited in 2018 as part of my solo show Abstractions in Fabric at the Castleton Bank Gallery.
I returned to the piece in 2024, finally feeling ready to quilt it in a way that supported the image rather than distracted from it. The quilting emphasizes the road, sky, and horizon, adding texture and movement while reinforcing the sense of distance and glow suggested by the original design.
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Exhibitions
Abstractions in Fabric — Solo exhibition, Castleton Bank Gallery, Rutland, Vermont, 2018
The completed quilt top was exhibited before quilting, foregrounding composition and color relationships.
Bennington Quilt Fest — Quiet Valley Quilters Guild, Bennington, Vermont, 2024 (non-juried)
A Vermont Quilt Sampler — Billings Farm & Museum, Woodstock, Vermont, June 27–September 7, 2026 (juried)
Drive into the Sunset was exhibited in A Vermont Quilt Sampler at Billings Farm & Museum. These installation views document the quilt within the museum’s timber-framed exhibition space.