Mallory Gallery

@mallory-gallery.bsky.social

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trash to treasure / improvisational quilting / ukulele with Kodachrome Babies / lake glass / vinyl records / expired film / occasional BT Cleveland, Ohio

A young Cooper’s Hawk sizes up a gray squirrel.
A series of 8 photos in a grid. They all take place in the same spot at the Greater Cleveland Aquarium. They feature the same child over the past 12 years.
Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
A pink haired woman tricks the birds into landing on her seed covered cowboy hat. A Blue Jay makes some weird sounds at her.
A stretched quilttop of my experience in the path of totality during the total solar eclipse made out of t-shirts.
A colorful quilt study lies on a carpeted floor. The study is an improv with Friendship Stars and Snowballs. It’s made with t-shirts only and uses magenta, teal, neon green and navy blue.
A brown Boston Terrier snoozes while being zipped into her girl’s hoodie
A photo of the the front and back covers of the book “Hey, Al!” by Arthur Yorinks.
A beautiful gray cat with striking green eyes stands outside on a wooden deck.
A photo collage of nine images. All nine photos feature a different quilt I made in 2025. The photo in the middle features me holding a quilt up.
An art quilt hangs on a wood paneled wall. The quilt it made from t-shirts: white, black, and hand bleached. The blocks are improv Sawtooth Stars, in various states of explosion. Hundreds of red, metallic stitches hold the quilt together. There are sequins, beads, and pearls as added texture. The quilt is about 1’ x 3’ and it hangs from a bamboo rod by silver metal clips.
R. Crumb comic books are scattered across a table.
“Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen” by Michelle Icard sits on a black table. There are many yellow post-its sticking out of the side, noting important topics throughout the book.
A quilt covers a bed with soft light coming in through the window behind it.
A paragraph in Kurt Vonnegut’s 1985 novel Galápagos. It reads, “”You, *Doctor Hiroguchi,” she went on, “think that everybody but yourself is just taking up space on this planet, and we make too much noise and waste valuable natural resources and have too many children and leave garbage around. So it would be a much nicer place if the few stupid services we are able to perform for the likes of you were taken over by machinery. That wonderful Mandarax you’re scratching your ear with now: what is that but an excuse for a mean-spirited egomaniac never to pay or even thank any human being with a knowledge of languages or mathematics or history or medicine or literature or ikebana or anything?””
A tray of sweets sits on a table. They are the “Nipples of Venus” you see in the movie Amadeus, made to eat before we saw the movie with a live orchestra.
An upcycled award ribbon that reads “1” hangs on a cork board with other ephemera.
A picture collage of six improvisational quilts. The quilt blocks that are improved are (from L to R) Tumbler, Spiderweb, Orange Peel, Snowball, Hourglass, and Bricks. These were all made used t-shirts mostly from my collection and supplemented with thrift store finds.
A robin fledgling perches on a patio chair.
A rainbow of lake glass lies on an outstretched palm. In the background is the Cleveland skyline and a beautiful blue sky.
My arm is holding out a vinyl copy of “Dutch Masters” by Dutch band Focus.
A Robin fledging perches on a patio chair.
A little boy sits with his aunts at a restaurant in the Netherlands sometime in the 1980s. The restaurant was built right over the highway.
A young person looks to the wall to show off the back of their new hairdo. I cut and colored it at home, I am not a professional but I’m proud! The bob features layers of hot pink, orange, and purple.
The famous Waldo Stick. It’s a tube about a foot long, with purple, silver, red and blue glitter floating in clear liquid. There is also a tiny Waldo floating inside waiting to be found.
A quilt top lies on my studio floor. There is a brown Boston terrier lying near the middle and looking at the viewer.
A statue of Rodin’s The Thinker is wearing his seatbelt in the back of my car.
A series of hourglass blocks made from t-shirts lay in an improv pattern on my studio floor. The blocks are still unseen. There are two “colors” at play: black and various tie-dye color ways. I played with scale and aimed for three sizes to fit together in various ways.
A milkshake in a Jazz Solo cup sits next to a creamed chicken sandwich from Softies in Dover, Ohio.
My left hand holding a large, smoothed piece of green lake glass. Bradstreet’s Landing Pier is peeking out of the left side of the photo. It was cloudy, but lots of sunshine breaks which makes for good glassin!
A small quilt lies on a white surface. It has been quilted but the edge still is needs binding. The main fabric is a vintage yellow daisy print. In the center is an appliquéd patch of my brown Boston terrier’s face. There are a variety of fabric colors used to create the shapes and contours of her face, all different Daisy themed fabrics as well.
Two Kliban tchotchkes frame a hand drawn cell from an American Splendor comic written by Harvey Pekar, drawn by Eddie Piskor.
A video showing how to stuff a home made poof full of every scrap you’ll ever make!
I’m holding a chunk of blue and white ceramic glass that I found at Rocky River Park in Cleveland, Ohio
A brown Boston terrier rubs her itchy back along the back of a gray couch. She enters the frame and leaves it a few times, kinda stumbling in her itchiness. She’s goofy!
A small bouquet of tulips in a handmade ceramic vase on a black table. The tulips are dark pink and the vase is turquoise.
Unsewn tshirt quilt blocks lay on a white surface. They are improvisations on the classic Snowball block. There are also 1/2 square triangles that are created during the process incorporated into the layout. The colors are deep turquoise, pinks, light teal, and hi-vis green.
A note from the notes app with my family’s Taco Bell order
The picture is divided into three sections. In each section is a more detailed shot of some of my beach finds. The top is a brown piece of glass with “US” imprinted. The bottom left is the biggest lucky stone I’ve ever found. Lucky stones are the inner ear bone of a freshwater drum fish, I find them often. The bottom right is a ducks foot? A fish fin? I’m really not sure. It’s orangey brown, slightly translucent and sure looks like a webbed foot to me.
I’m holding a large chunk of green lake glass in between my thumb and pointer finger up to a blue sky. The sun shines brightly in the top center and shows the translucence of the glass.
A completed tshirt quilt top lays on my studio floor. A brown Boston terrier lays near the middle and looks up at the viewer. The main piece of the quilt is an Orange peel improv using snow-dyed t-shirt bits, purples, blues and, grays. It is surrounded by two other blocks that I thought evoked Lake Erie: sunset colored flying geese and lake glass colored tumblers (for the Lake glass we love to collect).
Tshirt quilt blocks lay on my studio floor. They aren’t all sewn together just yet. There’s an orange peel improv in the center, surrounded by some flying geese and tumblers.
Many tshirt pieces are cut and ready to be sewn. They are pairs of triangles that will become classic flying geese quilt blocks. There is a sticker on my sewing machine that says “I want to believe” and has a picture of the thought-to-be-extinct Ivory Billed Woodpecker.
A finished quilt top lays on my studio floor. There is a brown Boston terrier lying on the quilt looking at the viewer. The quilt is made with both sentimental and single-use t-shirts. The blocks are mainly improvisations on the classic Spider’s Web quilt block. Colors include black, white, grays, teals, purples, and actual hi-viz strips from my dad’s work shirts.
A collage of two pictures. The one on the left is a portion of a T-shirt quilt I’m working on. The colors are teals, purples, grays black, white, and hi viz strips with neon yellow peeking too. The picture on the right is the famous Jazz Solo cup design.
A closeup of the watercolor painting described in the post.
A finished watercolor painting sits on a white desk surrounded by watercolor tools. The painting is a version of an improv quilt I made out of t-shirts, riffing on the classic Orange Peels quilt block. The colors include neon purple, metallic blue, charcoal gray and a mix of the three with salt added to give it the tie-dye pattern of the original quilt.
A brown Boston terrier stands on a grassy hill. There’s a bright blue sky behind her with an airplane trail fading away.
My completed game card for the Patchwork Doodle game.
A vintage Russ troll dressed as an artist and 3 packs of troll-themed collector cards sit on a wooden surface.
A small square canvas sits on a wooden background. The painting is of a brown Boston terrier in a style my nearly-ten-year-old niece described as “hyper-realistic” on a note. There’s an abstract application of paint in blues and greens in the background.
A colorful quilt lies on the carpet. The corner is folded back to reveal a patch with the message “To Max from Gigi” formed by all sorts of letters from the t-shirts that were cut up to make the quilt.
A short clip of me approaching the couch then finding a brown Boston terrier named Daisy sitting up on the headrest with her back legs pointing backwards. Very strange dog!
Unsewn quilt blocks lay on my studio floor as I try out design options. The blocks are made of t-shirts and there are rolled up uncut t-shirts in the mix. The blocks are all improvs on the classic Spider’s Web quilt block.
Four quilt blocks lay together to form a traditional spider’s web formation. They aren’t sewn together yet. The colors include grays, purples, black, and strips of a hi-vis shirt with both the reflective part and neon yellow showing. There’s also one of the panels of strip piecing that was used for the web laying below the formation.
Many 1” buttons lay on a white surface. They are five variations of Kodachrome Babies buttons.
Strip piecing lays out on a white surface. It’s all from cut up t-shirts. The colors are black, grays, purples, and the reflective parts of a hi vis work shirt that was my dad’s.
A colorful quilt made out of t-shirts drapes over a blue sofa.
A brown Boston terrier lays on a dark gray chair. Her eyes are open looking at the viewer. Her mouth is kinda smooshed to the side in a very ho-hum way.
A markerboard featuring the infamous Dinosaur Comics template is filled in by my 10 year old (who has never read DC). It reads: T Rex says“Hey! I’m walking here! Well, I told you to move at least.” Dromiceiomimus says “Huh!”Utahraptpr replies “Stop!” T Rex says “why should I?” Utahraptor replies, “Because!” T Rex ends the comic with “that’s not a reason!”