Meet The Artist

Penny Sisto is an internationally recognized artist who has exhibited throughout the United States and abroad. International presentations of her work include the exhibition of a grouping of Holocaust quilts at the Gatehouse of Auschwitz, and a selection of her slavery series quilts displayed at the Royal Armories Museum in Leeds, England, in 2008. She has won numerous awards and honors for her artwork and has been the subject of two public television programs. An advocate for social justice and peace, she is known for the difficult subjects, such as AIDS, poverty and racism, that she addresses in her works.

Born in the Orkney Islands off the northern tip of Scotland, Sisto began learning how to sew at age three. As an adult, she worked for the British Ministry of Overseas Development, utilizing her skills as a midwife to aid in health clinics for the Maasai, LuBukusu and Kikuyu tribes of East Africa. Her time in Africa inspired her to combine the quilting, embroidery and appliqué techniques she learned from her grandmother with the beading and collage methods of her African friends, resulting in the distinctive style seen in her work today.

Penny Sisto has received many commissions for quilts, including four works at the Abbey of Gethsemane, where a 28×9’ quilt entitled Risen Christ hangs at each Easter season and for funeral services. Some of the other collections containing Sisto’s works include: Sisters of Charity, Sisters of Loretto, Thomas Merton International Studies Center, Spalding University, Kennedy Family and the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts. Selected grants that Penny Sisto has received include: Kentucky Foundation for Women, Indiana Arts Commission, Master Fellowship and New Directions and Southern Arts. In 1993, she was awarded a Baha’i Peace Award for Arts Promoting World Peace because of her promotion of peace and justice through her work.