Andrea Finch: What the Bees See

Once a traditional flat quilter, Andrea Finch’s work has left the surface to become sculptures that taunt the viewer to reach out and touch. The garden, as it changes from season to season, is the inspiration for the artwork. Starting with botanical forms of leaves, flowers, or weeds, reducing the designs to more abstract forms, and finding the essence of the structure. Creating art to show aspects of the natural world few stop to observe and serve as a start for conversations about saving our flora and fauna.

Andrea uses all textiles, new and vintage conventional quilting fabrics, repurposed quilts collected or made decades ago, reclaimed tablecloths, curtains, and clothing from family and friends, salvaged upholstery textiles, and decorator samples diverted from landfills. Viewing the wall of collected fabric, fabrics catch the eye bringing color, texture, or pattern to the art. Each piece is a unique collection of hand-cut fabrics, stitched together with liberal use of thread by dense machine quilting and top-stitching through multiple layers of fabric and batting, and occasionally stuffed or wired. The fabrics form the stiffness needed to defy gravity to create the desired shape.

Andrea is saving memories, the environment and creating art that is accessible to everyone. Art that makes you smile in a world that can be so bleak. Creating a whimsical garden of flowers and vessels with ties to family and community.

A Second Sunday Gallery Reception will be held on Sunday, September 13, 2026 from 3-5pm in the Schmidt Gallery on the Second Floor of GoggleWorks Center for the Arts.

About the Artist

Andrea Finch creates botanical sculptural abstract quilts, exploring textile textures. Working primarily in fiber, her creations call to be touched. She was a traditional quilt maker for many years. Her botanical obsession began with photographing and creating an arboretum in her yard. Andrea grew up on a hobby farm in Eastern Pennsylvania and earned a BA in Fine Arts from Kutztown University. Her art career was interrupted for 18 years while she raised her children and lived a different creative life. When she returned to quilting, her work, never truly conventional, took on sculptural forms.

Now living in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, she is involved in many arts organizations. She is a Juried Artist member of SAQA, sits on the board of the Virginia Quilt Museum and Foundry Art Market.

Her work can be found in numerous national & regional juried shows, various galleries, museums, public and private collections.

Special Class

Gentle Yoga and Gallery Chat

September 12th 3:00 pm

Enjoy gentle yoga in GoggleWorks’ Schmidt Gallery surrounded by the quilted botanical sculptures of Andrea Finch, an artist who explores texture from realistic to abstract.

Click here to register