Local artist creates intricate, colorful quilts inspired by nature, Norwegian art

This story first appeared in Prestige - May 2025, a biannual special section distributed in The Gazette dedicated to Iowans 55+.

The walls of the Iowa City Parks Department lobby and offices are lined with intricate quilts that use colorful fabrics to depict the city’s parks and environments. The artist behind the quilts is the department’s director, Juli Seydell Johnson.

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Although she’s always been artistic, quilting came into Seydell Johnson’s life relatively recently. It wasn't until she was almost 30 years old that she made her first quilt, as a donation for an auction at the Bible camp where she met her husband.

Her first projects were more traditional quilts with repeating patterns and standard fabrics, far from the intricate and layered pieces she pursues now. Seydell Johnson’s projects now use unique fabrics and creative layouts to display images of plants, animals and city scenes, often inspired by her job with the parks department.

Seydell Johnson, 55, was inspired to create her more eclectic quilts around 2020, when she attended the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina, an intensive camp for adults that offers classes in art, writing, cooking, blacksmithing and other traditional practices. She took a class in pottery, not quilting, but the school sparked her interest in taking her art to the next level.

“I saw a lot of other creative things and talked with a lot of other people that kind of, like me, wanted to do art that are full-time professionals doing other things,” she said. “And that really sparked me into doing more and more of that.”

Shortly after, she created Buffalo Grace Designs, the brand she uses to display her designs and share her art.

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When designing her quilts, Seydell Johnson often takes inspiration from her day job as the Iowa City Parks and Recreation director. Her online gallery showcases colorful scenes of the outdoors, featuring vibrant foliage and recreation; others depict houses, trains and barns layered with greenery, weaving together the rhythms of city and rural life with the natural environment.

A recent piece that is hanging in her office now shows the planned design for a new Iowa City pool, a project that has dominated her work for the last five years.

The buildings in the scene are meticulously constructed with more than 2,000 one-inch squares of fabric, which Seydell Johnson said represents the hundreds of pieces of public input and consideration that went into the pool project. Layered over the new park’s design is a netting that shows the old pool’s design, representing the “ghost” of the old City Park pool, she said.

“That's an example of something that was kind of all-consuming in my professional life,” she said. “And then I got this idea, I wanted to make this quilt. I call it Beauty in a Box … There are these big, beautiful trees. That was so important to the public that we kept those with any kind of construction we were doing. So I made sure the quilt showed that — it shows the aliveness of the pools.”

When she plans out a quilt, Seydell Johnson often starts with a sketch or a photo of the scene she is designing. She starts with a simple pattern for the base of the quilt, and then she layers fabric on top to capture the image. She sometimes throws in different materials like buttons, beads or ribbons to add texture to the quilt.

Seydell Johnson said her art is a way to relieve stress from the busy demands of her job running Iowa City’s Parks and Recreations Department. Working on quilts and her other projects allows her to exercise her creative energies.

“You talk about getting into a flow as an artist, and the rest of the world melts away,” she said. “Well, that’s what happens when I work on a painting or a quilt. My job can be pretty stressful at times, and it’s nice to have that respite from it.”

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Growing up in a farmhouse in rural Iowa, Seydell Johnson said her family encouraged her creative spirit. She was allowed to explore and make things in her father’s wood shop at around 10 years old, and she learned to sew from her mother.

“I think that’s key to some of my art, because I grew up in a time when I was allowed to explore and do things,” she said.

Quilting isn’t the only art form Seydell Johnson does — she is also talented at Norwegian Rosemaling, a traditional Norwegian painting style that uses ornate flower designs to decorate household objects and architecture. She has made frequent visits to the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah to learn Norwegian art, and she said the practice gives her a chance to connect with her Norwegian heritage and carry on the art form.

Seydell Johnson gives talks to art groups and quilting guilds and has taught her craft to some family members. She said she hopes to teach more once she transitions out of her full-time job — but she stressed that it won’t be any time soon.

“I hope that this grows into more as I finish my full-time career in a few years, that I will get more time to do my art and explore more ways to teach and develop Buffalo Grace as I get older,” she said.

Linda Vogel, a friend of Seydell Johnson’s who often attends art classes with her, said she is impressed with Seydell Johnson’s creative process and her vision for her artwork. The pair have taken classes in lampwork, drawing and weaving, among other things. Vogel said Seydell Johnson is well-known and respected in Iowa City’s arts community, especially among those who aren’t connected to the arts scene at the University of Iowa.

Vogel said Seydell Johnson’s process is unique from any other artist or quilter she’s encountered.

“She just looks at it differently, pulls them together in the most unique ways,” Vogel said. “And you got a lot of quilters in this town, and hers are just very unique.”