Founding member of the Caprock Art Quilters, some call her “the grandmother of art quilting on the South Plains.”

Eleanor Jo “Ellie” Rude Kreneck was born October 10, 1936 in Manhattan, New York where her father, was in a residency to be a radiologist and her mother who had emigrated from Germany was a trained RN. The family moved south because of her mother’s health, settling in Galveston, Texas where her Father eventually taught at The University of Texas Medical School. Ellie doesn’t remember a time when she didn’t have a pencil in her hand. Her father hoped all his children would go into the medical profession and thought that art training would be good for a surgeon, so he provided art classes for Ellie who later insisted on attending the University of Texas in the Art Department. She met her future husband, Lynwood, in the painting lab at the University.

After a few years in San Antonio where Lynwood was a commercial artist for an advertising firm, they returned to Austin where he studied Printmaking. Upon receiving his MFA, they moved to Lubbock in 1965, with their three small children. In Lubbock Lynwood taught Printmaking at Texas Tech University and where in time Ellie became an adjunct professor in Design and Art History.

During the summers Lynwood taught Printmaking at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. The whole family went, and the children and Ellie were able to take classes at Penland for free. IT was at Penland in 1977 that Ellie was first introduced to surface design and later quilting, which was taught by Elizabeth Busch. These classes opened Ellie’s eyes to the possibilities of combining her formal art training and her sewing ability and her direction as an artist was set.

In addition to the excellent instruction at Penland, there were other influences. Lynwood’s inspired insights into art and his focus on what is important for artist enabled her to explore and draw upon her own sources of inspiration. Conversations with noted art quilter Yvonne Porcella, during her workshop at the Museum of Texas Tech University had a profound influence on the direction of Ellie’s art.

By 2007 Ellie had been juried into the Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) as a professional artist. Since then her work has been juried into numerous national and regional shows. Her work in included in several books among which are Five Hundred Art Quilts by Karey Bresenhan, Lone Star Quilts III, Texas Quilts Today, 1986-2011 by Karey Bresenhan and Nancy Puentes, People and Portraits by Martha Sielman, The Contemporary Art of Nature – Mammals by Ashley Rooney, Quirky to Modern Art Quilts by Judy Steiger Howard and A Sense of Place: Texas Landscape Art Quilts.

As the founder of the Caprock Art Quilters, a group of mostly SAQA members in West Texas, Ellie has created a space in which fiber artists of West Texas and Eastern New Mexico can meet to support, encourage and challenge each other thereby nurturing the work of art quilters into the future. Some call her the grandmother of art quilting on the South Plains.

Ellie’s style employs vibrant, saturated colors. She uses commercial fabric, hand painted fabric and manipulates the colors with resists and fiber reactive dyes. She works with cotton/poly batting and cotton thread. Techniques in her work include paper templates, hand painting, machine piecing, hand and machine quilting and appliqués. Her strong Catholic beliefs are seen in her work through the saints that populate the pieces. Her sense of place is represented in her work in the canyons and landscape of West Texas. A red pick-up truck and rabbit often seen in her work provide a glimpse of her sense of humor.