Makers

Paper Prayers

Combining block printing, paper craft, and illustration, Maui-based artist Susanna Cromwell imparts meaningful intention with each paper quilt she creates.

By Kimberly Coburn
November 24, 2024

Winter 2025

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Photo by Susanna Cromwell

Detail of Loulu Akala—a 2022 quilt made from Japanese chiri paper, cotton thread, and oil-based printing ink—which invites a closer look at Hawaii's loulu palm.

Enveloped in a warm ripple of candlelight, friends gather around a dining table in an inviting Maui home. They swap stories and refill each other’s glasses. The earthy scent of fresh-brewed coffee fills the room. On the wall behind them hangs a stitched paper quilt. Its yellow, block-printed fan palms almost seem to flutter with each gale of laughter. The rich, honey tones of the print and the way the palm blades radiate recall the warmth of a sunrise. The quilt’s triangular geometry and folded edges give it the lively feel of a sail or kite.

The quilt was made for a family who had navigated grief and, in its wake, wanted to infuse their gathering space with cheer. “The title—Laughter in the Wind—came to me, knowing what they had gone through and that they needed joy in that time,” says Susanna Cromwell. “That was my prayer while I made it.” When she creates a quilt, Cromwell says, “it can’t just be a product. It has to be a prayer.”

This gentle thoughtfulness typifies the work of Cromwell, an artist whose practice includes nature illustration and watercolor painting, block printing, and paper craft. Her work has grown from block-printed cards and one-of-a-kind prints sold in Hawaiian boutiques to framed paper quilts that hang in galleries and upscale hotels, including the Four Seasons Resort Maui. Even with her increasing exposure and popularity, Cromwell views each piece as an opportunity to radiate care into the world.

Photo by Daniel Jones

Susanna Cromwell's Majestic Takeover, a 2022 "paper quilt" with gampi and cotton rag papers, represents how monstera climbs building walls and the undercanopy of Hawaii's rainforests, 51 x 51 in.

Kitchen-Table Beginnings

Cromwell was raised outside of Boston by parents who had immigrated from the West African archipelago of Cape Verde. From winning a bank calendar contest as an elementary school student to participating in the teen docent program at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts, she has been drawn to art for as long as she can recall. “I started off an artist, like everyone. I think we all do,” she says.

Her parents’ emphasis on education motivated Cromwell to seek a degree in social work with a focus on women’s issues, while the stories they told of their island home stirred in her a deep attraction to island life. Cromwell moved to Hawaii, where she married and started a family, spending the majority of her time and energy raising four children and volunteering in schools to educate students about the dangers of sex trafficking.

“I didn’t do much art in that season other than an occasional birthday gift or making a decoration for the nursery,” she says. Eager to find a path forward that both employed her talents and felt like a new departure, she took a printmaking workshop that focused on carving stamps. “Even though I was just stamping tea towels,” she says, “it felt revolutionary.”

Her block-printed cards and art became popular in local boutiques, but the scope of her work remained constrained by the space and time available to her: “Now I have a studio, but for years, my projects were just things I could do in the car, during nap times, or on the kitchen table,” she recalls.

What might have been a limitation for others became a strength in Cromwell’s work, says Rebecca van Bergen, founder and executive director of Nest, a nonprofit artisan-support organization with which Cromwell worked. “There’s something very unique about the legacy of craft being produced in the home, especially with interior décor,” van Bergen says. “Because you’re creating in your home, the work is influenced by your own space, your own family, your own lineage, before going into other people’s homes. It’s a really rich exchange.”

Nest supports craft artists by connecting them with retail and philanthropic resources and relationships. Through its Makers United program, Cromwell created a line of custom products for the well-loved retailer Madewell. The partnership offered her the opportunity to scale up from mainly selling originals to creating replicable designs for stationery, prints, and totes. These products, in turn, vastly increased her exposure and provided her with the financial stability she needed to experiment within her creative practice.

Cromwell began designing, printing, folding, and stitching paper quilts that explore the symbolic meanings of the elements of Hawaii’s natural landscape. For example, she’ll use limpets—‘opihi in Hawaiian—a kind of clinging mollusk, to represent the desire to hold on to something. In work made after the wildfires that destroyed much of the town of Lahaina, Maui, in 2023, she included ‘ulu, or breadfruit, as a prayer for a future of growth and abundance after the devastating loss.

She quickly made the leap to fine art. Viewpoints, the Hui No‘eau Visual Arts Center, and other Maui galleries displayed her work, and the Oahu-based Polu Gallery gave her a number of solo shows.

Photo by Shannon Ruth Photography

Portrait of Susanna Cromwell.

Photo by Susanna Cromwell

Cromwell stitches hand-printed botanical images to create a paper quilt.
Photo by Shannon Ruth Photography

The artist is carving this linoleum block into an image of the 'l'iwi bird and 'ōhi'a lehua tree, both species native to the Hawaiian Islands.

Custom Quilts, Bespoke Blessings

At the same time, Cromwell found herself drawn to the intimacy between artist and client that her commissioned work demanded. “I really started falling in love with making art specifically for people,” she says.

In face-to-face discussions or in video calls, Cromwell strives to gain insight into more than frame dimensions and the client’s preferred color palette; she wants her work to remain in conversation with the people who see it as they come and go, to impart something of value to them each day. “I just need to know what they love,” she says. “And what they need.”

“If I can see their eyes, it makes a big difference to the piece,” she adds, underscoring the importance of presence and connection in her work. Cromwell’s thoughtful inquiries guide her efforts to craft art for the home that reflects the viewer’s unique experience and personality. “I’ll just sit with them and ask questions: ‘Are you an ocean person or are you a land person? When do you feel alive? Do you wake up here or fall asleep here? Do you want to rest here or do you want to be inspired for the day here?’”

Once she gains these understandings, Cromwell begins the making process by selecting her paper, based on how it looks and how it behaves. While she often gravitates toward Japanese paper, she also uses Mayan snake plant paper from Mexico, Thai paper, and hanji, Korean mulberry paper. Her husband, Reed, constructs the frames for her work, and she incorporates the wood’s tones into her palette. Cromwell plays with color based on the subject and the energy she’s trying to convey. Red, for example, has vivifying qualities. “It’s one of those wake-up colors,” she says. “It’s good for where you work or where you have breakfast or laugh.”

She carves her blocks from rubber or linoleum, favoring the former for repeated designs and the latter for larger works. Because of the surface area lost to folding, Cromwell usually prints about five times as much material as the final dimensions of the work call for. After cutting the prints into pieces, she adjusts their placement, flipping some over so a fainter image shows through the back of the paper. She achieves depth and dimension by folding and stitching the paper; in most of her quilts, she uses simple, straight stitches, but in others she turns to intricate bookbinding techniques.

Photo by Susanna Cromwell

Detail of Loulu by the Sea, a commission created for a couple who love the land and sea.

Wild Invitations

The combination of shifting color, print orientation, and stitch lines brings a meditative quality to the pieces and creates opportunities for personal contemplation. “They offer the viewer a place to go, something to daydream to,” she explains. “It’s kind of like a labyrinth. You can sit and not see it all at once. Then your mind can wander.”

Her work also fosters deep connection with the natural world. Cromwell hopes that her images, with their carefully rendered details, will make people more aware of native Hawaiian plants and aquatic species in their day-to-day lives. “My main goal is to bring the outside indoors in a way that inspires people to turn back outside,” she says. “I look at it like a mirror facing a window, a back-and-forth exchange between nature and interior space.”

By truly getting to know the people for whom she crafts these beautiful pieces, Cromwell imbues her work with a special magic. “I get attached to each paper quilt,” Cromwell says, “but because I create them with love and prayers for the commissioning person, I also end up getting attached to the people for whom the art is created.” Her work continues speaking long after it has left her studio. It whispers prayers of well-being that resonate within the walls of a home and the chambers of the heart.

Kimberly Coburn is an Atlanta-based writer and maker whose work explores the intersection between craft, the human spirit, and the natural world.

Photo by Daniel Jones

Using a variety of Japanese mulberry papers, colors pulled from denim, and sashiko stitching techniques, Cromwell created Shifter, 2024, 72 x 47 in., for an ocean- and fashion-loving couple. It serves as a large guardian piece for their home's entrance.

Photo by Weekday Studio

To tell the story of sand, Cromwell used a mixture of Japanese and Thai papers for Sand, 2023, 38 x 38 in.

Visit Susanna Cromwell online.

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