Gwen Marston
Gwen Marston (October 2, 1936 - April 19, 2019) was an American quilter, quilt teacher, and author who championed a liberated style of quilting beyond rigid commercial quilt patterns. After seeing an antique quilt exhibit at the Flint Institute of Art in the mid-1970s, Marston was inspired to learn how to make quilts. She initially learned to quilt from Mennonite women, and started with bed-sized quilts. Beyond exhibits of her own work including at the Taupo Art Museum during the 2013 New Zealand Symposium, Marston taught quilting classes, wrote books on quilting, and produced videos on quilting. For  30 years, Marston led an annual quilt retreat in Beaver Island (Lake Michigan) that was held at Central Michigan's Biological Station. In 1989 she talked about the ongoing revival of quilting, and recognized that she was spending more of her time talking about quilts than making quilts. In public lectures Marston shared considerations of old and new quilts in lectures she presented at different locations in the United States, and gave the keynote address at the 2016 Modern Quilt Guild's QuiltCon conference in Pasadena, California. In 1979 she started working with Joe Cunningham, and together they curated information  about Mary Schafer's quilting career. This led to a 2005 book, "Mary Schafer, American Quilt Maker," that won the Michigan Notable Book Award and was reviewed by library journals. Personal life. Marston also enjoyed gardening, especially daffodils. She died of cancer in April 2019.