Ann Wilson

Ann Wilson (October 14, 1931 – March 11, 2023) was an American painter and multidisciplinary artist, one of the earliest to work with quilts as an art form.

Biography Ann Marie Ubinger was born to a German Irish family of modest roots on October 14, 1931, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her father worked in public relations for a steel company and her mother was a librarian and painter who studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. The interactions and influences of the area inspired her to paint earthy-hued geometric quilts. In 1955, she created the 5-by-7-foot quilt painting "Moby Dick" now owned by the Whitney Museum. Her work inspired avant-guard women artists and helped establish the folk art of quilting as a fine-art medium.

In the 1960s, the Coenties Slip scene began to break apart due to urban renewal. Wilson moved and shifted her work to performance art "Happenings" and to painting. She later moved to upstate New York, teaching art at Dutchess Community College.

In 2018, the Emily Harvey Foundation in Manhattan held a retrospective of her work.

Personal life Ann Wilson married writer William S. Wilson (son of visual artist May Wilson) in 1957; they separated in 1966 but did not divorce. After losing their firstborn child shortly after birth, the couple had three children. Ann Wilson was close friends and often collaborator with a number of NYC-based artists across disciplines, including performance art director Robert Wilson, visual artists Paul Thek and Harmony Hammond, photographer Peter Hujar, and feminist writer Jill Johnston, among others.