Vermont quilt artist Hope Johnson, who has been a professional gardener for fifteen years and an artist all of her life, is inspired by the geometry of patterns in nature and the challenge required to successfully execute form and content in original designs. She lives in Shelburne, Vermont with her supportive and patient husband, designer and illustrator Grant A. Urie. Her studio is Vermont Quilt Bee, where she works independently and also collaborates with local Vermont craftswomen in the design and creation of fiber art and quilts with a focus on the honey bee and hive geometry.

Hope studied studio art, including fiber art with Carol D. Westfall, and earned a certificate for Art Education K-12 and Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology with a published abstract of original research on children’s drawings from Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey in 1982.

She began quilting in 1984 after seeing a crazy quilt on display in a church in Nova Scotia and was initially inspired by the early work of the master quilter and author Jinny Beyer. Starting with a hand-quilting class taught by Gail Hausler, a founder of the Garden State Quilters Guild, Hope went on to create original quilts for friends and family and eventually taught quilting to adults in West Orange, New Jersey.

Hope was the recipient of the 2009 Vermont Quilt Festival’s Governor’s Award for Best Vermont Quilt for her quilt, “Honey, I’m Home”, which was accepted in the juried American Quilters Society show in Paducah, Kentucky in April, 2010. Mainly inspired by learning from beekeepers, she has designed and made an original bee quilt for submission to the annual Vermont Quilt Festival (VQF) contest since 2010; that same year she won a blue ribbon and “Best Use of Mixed Techniques” award for “The Hive in Winter”. At VQF 2012, she received a judge’s choice award for “Mind Your Own Beeswax” and the same award at VQF 2013 for “Hive in Summer”. In 2014, her quilt, “God Save the Queen” won both judge’s choice and blue ribbon awards at VQF. Both of her 2015 VQF entries, “Hive in Spring” and “Miniature Bee Quilt” were awarded blue ribbons. The following year, her “Waggle Dance Quilt” received a special judge’s “Just Bee Cause” award and another judge’s choice award followed in 2017 for “Hive in Autumn”. Her quilt, “The Bees’ Needs” was awarded a “Best Social Awareness” award at the 2018 VQF. Ten years after receiving her first Governor’s award, she was awarded a second Governor’s award for a miniature bee quilt, “Kind of Blue” at the 2019 VQF. Hope proudly and gratefully shares her success with the beekeepers whose stewardship and knowledge of the honey bee has allowed her to flourish artistically and raise awareness of the importance of ecosystem health.

Hope started publicly showing her quilts in 2001 at a solo quilt exhibit at Shelburne Museum’s Celebration of the Seasons event and has exhibited locally at quilt shows, public libraries, honey bee themed events, as well as beekeepers conferences and seminars in New England, NY, NJ, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Ontario, Canada. Each year, Hope creates an auction quilt for the Eastern Apicultural Society to raise funds for honey bee educational programs and she has made commissioned work for beekeepers in Vermont, North Carolina, California, Arizona, New York and New Jersey. Since 2011, her work has been included in the annual works by local artists holiday show at the Jackson Gallery at the Town Hall Theater in Middlebury. She has also been an annual exhibitor at the Shelburne Farms Harvest Festival since 2017.