Common thread: Artist stitches quilt for animal awareness

As an animal advocate, Joan DaVanzo hopes to find a home for every animal that needs one.

But animals aren’t the only ones in need of a home. DaVanzo is also looking for a home for her 12-foot-long living quilt that raises awareness about the plight of homeless animals. 

The quilt includes 109 squares with signatures of famous individuals such as Tony-award winner Bernadette Peters, Betty White, Bill Gates, Christopher Walken, Jane Goodall and even former U.S. presidents Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton. 
 

But as it sits folded up in her living room, the quilt isn’t living up to DaVanzo’s original goal of helping animals. With the quilt growing and showing no signs of stopping, DaVanzo is ready to share it with the public. She’s enlisted the help of Suncoast Polytechnical High School seniors Nick Bermudez, Andoni Aristimuno and Liam Donoghue’s company, Northern Cinematics, to produce a marketing film. 

DaVanzo will present the film to local museums and organizations to find a temporary or permanent home for the quilt. 

DaVanzo’s passion for helping animals dates back to 1999, when she began volunteering for an animal shelter after retiring from 22 years of teaching.

The inspiration for the quilt came 15 years ago during a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she saw the Tumbling Blocks with Signatures patterned quilt by Adeline Harris Sears. Sears began her quilt in 1856 and sent diamond-shaped pieces of silk to prominent figures at the time to sign, then incorporated them into her quilt. 

DaVanzo thought a similar concept could raise awareness about the plight of animals, so she began quilting squares of fabric artwork and squares together.
 

Then, she set out to get signatures of artists, actors, musicians and even former U.S. presidents, hoping that fans would see it and  be inspired to help animals. She reaches out specifically to celebrities who have adopted animals or advocated for animals.

“Maybe a Willie Nelson fan will see he signed and think, ‘Willie Nelson, wow that’s really cool,’”  DaVanzo said.

Today, she goes about getting signatures in myriad ways. She’ll mail a blank, white square of cotton fabric to a celebrity and hope he or she returns it signed. Sometimes, she’ll track down an artist on tour and attend a performance just to hand them a sharpie for a quick signature.

“I wouldn’t call it ‘stalking,’ but if you have to call it something...” DaVanzo said. 

In 2012, when Whoopie Goldberg was performing at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, DaVanzo waited backstage and obtained a signature after remembering a story of how Goldberg adopted a kitten that was thrown from a moving car onto a bridge.

“I know she has another cat, Oliver,” DaVanzo said. “I was talking to her for just a few seconds while she signed and asked how is the kitten doing, and how is Oliver?”

By 2011, DaVanzo completed one panel of the quilt, and she has since completed eight more panels with hundreds of signatures. 
DaVanzo has also grown the concept to include not just dogs and cats but also cows, pigs, elephants and horses. 

“You look at pigs, and they’re brilliant animals,” DaVanzo said. “We for some reason in our society have distinguished between dogs, cats, pigs and cows.”

Ideally, she would like a space that allows people, as well as their four-legged friends, to visit. She has some locations in mind, such as the Sarasota Museum of Art or the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.

“The Ringling Museum has a certain irony to it,” DaVanzo said. “It would be nice to have it at the Ringling Museum, but yet there was the abuse of the elephants that was going on. Now that they’re doing their penance, it would be all right.”