Quilted Canvas: Sydney Kleinrock

Protecting The Dreamer, Sydney Kleinrock, 2025

Sydney Kleinrock is a handpoke tattoo artist who also paints and is now integrating soft sculpture into her practice. She uses quilting as a way to express how time accumulates and leaves traces within domestic spaces, especially with fabrics. Each stitched section becomes a fragment of memory, forming a narrative that unfolds non-linearly, just like lived experience itself.

I love how she transforms traditional painting from a flat surface into a quilted canvas. Through her Instagram, I learned that she first quilts the canvas and then primes it with gesso before painting. This process beautifully conveys the fragmented and layered nature of memory and experience. Her approach reminds me of Nikolija Stanojević’s Embroidered Quilt I have talked about, where the act of stitching disrupts the surface of fabric to reveal tension and emotion.

Kleinrock’s use of quilting, a practice historically associated with domestic labour and women’s craft, reclaims a traditionally “feminine” and undervalued material process. Her approach situates the work within the critical framework of material feminism, which examines how textile practices can embody feminist resistance and lived experience through acts of material labour. It makes me think about my own practice’s connection with material feminism, as I also work with felting which involves slow, repetitive gestures. This rhythm of labour conveys emotional survival and healing. The making process itself becomes a political gesture, turning invisible care into visible form.

Kleinrock, Sydney. “Quilted Paintings.” Sydney Kleinrock (website). Accessed October 19, 2025. https://www.sydneykleinrock.com/quilted-paintings.