Trained as a painter, Radka Donnell (1928-2018) began using fabrics in her quilt art by the mid-1960s. Her wide swaths of energetic prints reveal her painterly aesthetic. An ardent feminist, she became even more politicized through creating quilts, associating that process with women’s lives and bodies. Although Donnell viewed quilts as art forms, the sizes and proportions of most of her work suggest the bed as a human nexus. Eva's Garden from the Paradise Dozen was part of the IQM exhibition Abstract Design in American Quilts at 50: New York Nexus, curated by Sandra Sider.