The image in Marlene O'Bryant-Seabrook's quilt "Roots and Wings: A Millennium Challenge" could be an icon for quilting: angel wings on a woman with feet that have grown like roots into the soil beneath her.

Rooted, yet able to fly, is the way to look at a tradition with skills and boundaries still open to new possibilities.

Quilts from two artists - O'Bryant-Seabrook and Dottie Moore" - join carved and painted gourds by Michele Tejuola Turner in the three exhibits on display at The Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum.

Roots aren't a primary image in the show, but it's telling that their presence is so obvious in some of the quilts, like Moore's "Earth," in which half the quilt shows soil beneath a tree with its bright roots spreading through the darkness.

These artists love roots - natural, spiritual and cultural roots.

What are the threads of a quilt but roots? Anchoring the image, the pattern, the warmth, the threads root the quilt.

Love for roots and love for quilts could be the same thing. A rural setting must have trees and quilts.

Quilt-making has deep roots in our heritage. The quilts of our grandmothers are prized possessions.

Now, in place of old patterns and configurations, O'Bryant-Seabrook and Moore use quilting to paint scenes and tell stories, blending new media with old stitching.

The artists go deeper in their tradition to go higher with new approaches, the way a tree's roots go deeper into the earth so its branches can go higher into the sky.

The fruits of the earth, then, are hardly out of place here.

Some of Turner's carved and painted gourds have storytelling frames like ancient urns, with characters captured in action, only far more colorful and energetic. She connects her work with family roots, naming her exhibit "In Praise of Our Mothers."

Using the warp and curve of gourds to embody the songs, dances, myths and folk tales of Africa, Turner memorializes traditions with the oldest medium: nature.