Tina Williams Brewer

Tina Williams Brewer – internationally known fiber artist and story quilt maker was born in Huntington, WV. After graduating from St. Joseph High School, she entered the Columbus College of Art and Design, graduating with a BA in 1971. After graduation, she was offered a job at the Joseph Horn, Co. in Pittsburgh, PA and worked there for six years as an interior decorator before marrying and starting her family. Then being a stay-at-home mom and in a new community she wanted the opportunity to be with other women and to get to know this community. She started volunteering at the YWCA and when her kids were in school full time she volunteered and taught in the school. During this time quilting was not her main focus. She worked in photography and ceramics and made homemade Christmas sweets to share with her family and friends when the family came home for Christmas. But she found ceramics and photography too time-consuming and expensive, especially with her young family. She made her first quilt for her daughter, using scraps of materials from the Horn company- it was made from green polka dot fabric with black dancing dolls. After that she made a quilt for her goddaughter and as others saw her work her quilting career took off. Her first commissioned quilt featured a Sankofa bird – an African bird symbolizing learning from the past and moving forward. Quilting became her ‘calming, me time.’ She could pick it up and put it down whenever she needed to do so. It was more of a hobby, but it was something for her that became her salvation, as she learned about African symbols, textures, and cultures – she began to meditate and developed a passion of the heart for African culture and her artwork came from a place deep in her. Her desire is to plant that seed now in our children and to leave a legacy – teaching and mentoring to as many people as she can so they can continue the work of the past. She describes herself as the African American Cultural Worker. She is a teaching artist. Her quilts and wall-hangings tell stories of her family, African culture, African American culture by incorporating pictures, newspaper articles, silks, laces, buttons and hand stitching-and at all times incorporating emotions and feelings.In 1991 she and her husband, John started the Pittsburgh Coliseum -which was an oral history center and jazz club and for 35 years this was their business. Many of her works hung in the coliseum and many people seeing her work commissioned works.She has been providing lectures and workshops for over 25 years and has held many Artist-In-Residence positions.Her quilts and wall-hangings are featured in traveling shows in PA, WV, Ohio, KY, TX, CO, Washington, DC, and SC. She is a member of the Associated Artist of Pittsburgh, the Trolley Station Oral History Center, an advisory board member of the Senator John Heinz Center, Fiber Arts Guild of Pittsburgh, Women of Visions, Inc., and Pittsburgh
Filmmakers/Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Tina has been featured in the Eclectic Rhythms, the Artists of Huntington, WV, 1871-Present by Geoffrey Fleming, published by the Huntington Museum of Art in August 2021 and received the museum’s Walter Groupus Artist Award in 2006. In 2024 she received the Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Award as an established artist.