Blanche Emily Carstenson

Born in Kansas in 1907, Blanche Emily Williams recalled how as a young child, she would watch her mother and grandmother carefully hand-pick colorful scraps of fabric to construct their quilts. She later believed this is what eventually inspired her own signature works as a designer and constructor of fabric collages intermingled with unique patterns of stitching and needlework.

In 1927, Blanche married Cecil C. Carstenson, and the newlywed couple first lived together in Omaha, Nebraska. There, Blanche took art and design courses at the University of Omaha and learned the ancient art of batik fabric dying. This method of altering fabric immediately intrigued her, and she often used it in her own work as an artist and would later teach her own variations of the method to others.

In the late 1940s, the Carstensons moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where they settled in the Roanoke neighborhood just around the corner from the home of the painter Thomas Hart Benton. While Cecil pursued his passion for sculpting in wood, Blanche began creating quilts, tablecloths and pillowcases for friends and family. Soon after, Blanche began receiving special requests for her unique pieces, and she quickly developed a reputation in the Kansas City community as one of its finest artists. Her fabric pieces began to grow in scale and shape, evolving into structures such as large wall hangings -- one of which now hangs in the University of Missouri, Kansas City’s library. 

The Carstensons were also heavily involved in Kansas City’s art community, both helping to establish the Kansas City Artists Coalition and the Mid-America Artists' Association, of which Blanche was president in 1954. She also served as the director of the Mid-America Annual Exhibition for eight years and established the Unitarian Gallery in Kansas City in the 1960s, where she served as the director of art exhibitions for ten years.

After the death of her husband in 1991, Blanche eventually moved to Colorado to live with her daughter. She died at the age of ninety-five in 2002.