Catching up with . . . Connie Bloom

Former Beacon Journal features department editor/columnist Connie Bloom continues to have an interesting career as an art quilts guru. It’s a talent described as creating fiber art that looks like paintings.

Connie has a 350 square foot studio as the resident quiltmaker in Summit Artspace on the third floor at 140 E. Market Street. It’s next door to the Akron Art Museum.

Her phone number is (330) 472-0161. Or you can email her at connie@conniebloom.com

Connie Bloom with
a quilt art piece

You also can visit Connie’s studio the first weekend of every month during Artwalk, which is 5-10 p.m. Saturday and noon-4 p.m. Sunday. There’s art for sale, snacks and free rides from Lolly the Trolley to all the studios in the art district.

Connie moved a few years ago from her Red Light Galleries, 111 N. Main Street, next door to Luigi’s.

She is publisher/editor of QSDS (Quilt Service Design Symposium), a quarterly online magazine about fabric art.

She married Bob Shields in 2008. They have been together for more than a decade. 

Connie once was married to former BJ Beacon magazine, Miami Herald Tropic and Hartford, Connecticut Courant magazine editor Lary Bloom, who taught writing at Trinity College for years. Lary is with CPTV/WNPR, the Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network, and lives in Chester, Connecticut. 

Former Garfield High majorette Connie has done art quilts for BJ reporter Kim McMahan, a memorial for Kim’s late daughter Brooke McMahan, and for Maura McEnaney, who gave it to her husband, former BJ sports department honcho Ken Krause, for Christmas. Ken and Maura live in Medford, Massachussetts.

Summit Artspace has exhibited works of past and current BJ artists Chuck Ayers, John Backderf, Art Krummel, Dennis Balogh, Kathy Hagedorn and Brian Shellito.

Connie was part of the 2008 BJ exodus that saw more than 400 years of experience walk out the door. Others included copy editors Charles Montague and Betsy Lammderding, reporter Tracy Wheeler, sportswriter Brian Windhorst, photographers Ken Love and Lew Stamp, librarian Diane Leeders, line-drawer/photographer Ted Schneider and artist Dennis Earlenbaugh, .

It was the beginning of a decimation that reduced the BJ staff to one floor – the third – and kick-started attempts to rent out the first and second floors and the mezzanine to other businesses.