Quilt people are a little obsessed. I know. I've been a quilt person since age 0. A quilt frame was installed in our house every winter when I was growing up. My mother and her friends made quilts that were completely functional, and special ones to mark the really important stuff like weddings and babies.

Quilts were symbolic of lives based on an ethic of independence and frugality. Those women never thought of themselves as artists, but they were great technicians and every one of them would have enthusiastically boarded a bus and headed for the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn to see the 26th annual juried quilt show "Quilts=Art=Quilts." They would have inspected quilts there that are exhilarating, inspiring, exasperating, and disappointing, and spent hours discussing which quilt was what and why.

To be in this show, 194 contemporary artists submitted digital images of 330 quilts. Eighty-nine pieces were ultimately selected for display. Finalists hail from 39 states and four countries. Judges were Liz Axford and Nancy Halpern, both art quilt superstars, and quilt collector Jonathan Holstein. As juried fiber art shows go, it doesn't get any more "big time" than this.

Quilts are coverlets composed of three layers, a top (the pretty side) sewn together from pieces of fabric forming designs, a backer that's usually plain, and fluffy filling (usually polyester or cotton batten) sandwiched in-between. Layers are held together with stitching, as important to the overall artfulness as the pieced top pattern. To turn this craft into a work of art, the artist questions and pushes the limits of any or all of these components.

Twenty years ago, quilt artists largely abandoned mass-produced fabric in favor of printing, painting, dying, photo-imaging, and drawing on fabric to create their own unique colors and images. It is a trend that has gathered steam and now accounts for most contemporary quilts. The prize for "Best of Show" was awarded to Astrid Hilger Bennett from Iowa for her abstract quilt "Balances," a symmetrical composition made from loosely painted and printed one-of-a-kind fabric.

Nancy Crasco turns the components of quilts on ear with "Tunic for Icarus," a construction made from see-through silk and "filled" with real bird feathers. The piece manages to look Japanese and Native American simultaneously, a kind of Cherokee kimono.

A few crafters in this show challenge basic shape. There is a 3-D castle and another that's adorned with silk purses (attached to a portrait of a pig - ha!). Another quilt hangs off the wall in curls and flounces. Several are less than a foot or two square, mere fragments of quilts. All of these are too contrived to be effective. Nor do I understand the fascination with beadwork decoration. Here's the problem: when anything is merely "decorated," it drops from the column of serious artwork into decorative craft.

Kay Preston, however, uses beadwork as an effective tool in her quilt, "Mission Accomplished?" Her collage is a riot of over-the-top sparkle and circus colors interspersed with fabric photocopies of President Bush uttering what we now know are insultingly stupid post-invasion sound bites. The quilt is dazzling and funny and tragic all at the same time, relaying the very serious message that it may be war but it's still just show biz.  

Quilts=Art=Quilts

Through January 6

Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center

205 Genesee St, Auburn

315-255-1553, schweinfurthartcenter.org