Wendeanne Keaka Stitt
Wendeanne Ke`aka Stitt (Santa Cruz, CA) is a mother, award-winning quilt maker and a Hawaiian kapa maker who has a 28 year history in the San Francisco Bay Area as a visual display artist. A life-long student of quilts and their makers, especially the Amish, she developed a respect for women whose lives were spent working long days, caring for their families, and creating beautiful quilts. Her children grown, she now pursues quilt making full time.
Stitt is also one of the original members of Kuku I Ka Pono-The Kapa Project. Upon completing her two year kapa making apprenticeship, she continued her learning with Kumu Kapa Dalani Tanahy (Makana, HI) so that she may share her knowledge and kapa lineage with Hawaiians and Hawaiians-at-heart in California.
Over the past 30 years, her work has been shown nationwide including the De Young Museum-San Francisco, the Museum of Contemporary Crafts-NYC, the Oakland Museum of California, and the Snyderman-Works Gallery, Philadelphia, PA. In 2009, Stitt, along with Kumu Hula Kau`i Peralto, was a recipient of an Alliance for California Traditional Arts Living Cultures grant. This summer she was a participant in `Imiakea: Navigating Polynesian Art and Science at the Exploratorium in San Francisco .Her kapa quilt, Niho Manō, is currently touring with Fiberart International 2010.