Tony Winner Harvey Fierstein Has Pivoted to Quilting

Photo: courtesy of the subject

He’s an asshole,” Harvey Fierstein says as he approaches his Gammill long-arm quilting machine, which dominates his Connecticut art studio. The industrial-size device includes a computer interface for creating precise patterns, but he prefers to use it like a pencil and paper, doodling swirls directly onto ice-dyed velveteen. The dye is a recent addition to his process. “You go through these periods when the fabric does the talking or when the design does the talking,” he tells me. Currently, the fabric is yelling. At 73, the Broadway legend has an encyclopedic knowledge of his materials, always remembering which drawer holds which scrap, which spool carries which thread, and which shelf has his custom denim penis fabric.

When Fierstein started quilting in 2009, it was a hobby. He’d long been a fan of HGTV’s Simply Quilts, hosted by Alex Anderson, and decided on a whim to try a design. Soon thereafter, this craft studio — originally intended for painting and ceramics — was completely transformed. Fierstein is now mulling writing a book about what he considers his primary occupation. He first pondered an instructional quilting guide but was told by his agent, “The world doesn’t need another.” So he’s pivoting to the personal: an art catalog exploring the intention behind each of his 250-or-so pieces. Inspiration often strikes fast, he says: “Remember, last week, we had that incredible moon?” A few days later came an intricate burgundy quilt honoring that bright moon and its phases. Another time, he had a dream about “fucking trees.” That image became a quilt too.

Fierstein was raised in Bensonhurst in the 1950s. (His childhood proximity to Coney Island is evident in his current home; a giant funhouse sign hangs above his kitchen sink.) Becoming a fine artist was his goal from a young age. He attended the High School of Art and Design and later earned a BFA from Pratt, where he intended to study painting but switched to ceramics. “I was a painting student who hated the painting school,” he says, grabbing some fabric scraps from his cabinet.

A life in the theater was an accident — he got his start onstage professionally when he auditioned in 1971 for Andy Warhol’s Pork as a way to get to know the famous artist. He was cast in the short-lived experimental play at La MaMa as Amelia, whom he later described in his memoir as “an asthmatic lesbian maid” with a “penchant for porn mags and plate jobs.” It was in that run that Fierstein discovered his love for drag, which he illustrates for me by pulling out a quilt gridded with drag queens and queer performers. Bianca Del Rio is drawn intricately; so are Leigh Bowery, Nina West, and even Cole Escola.

By the time Fierstein graduated from art school in 1973, he was fully enmeshed in the downtown underground-theater scene. La MaMa produced the first version of what would become his legendary semi-autobiographical play, Torch Song Trilogy; it was later transferred to Broadway, winning him his first and second Tonys. (He hand-crocheted the bunny slippers featured in the show; they’re now in the Smithsonian.) Following all this success, Fierstein had roles in Mrs. Doubtfire and Mulan and even starred in his own sitcom as an out gay actor years before Will & Grace and its closeted lead.

When he bought his country home, he says, it looked like a “horrible Malibu beach house,” but he bulldozed it and built a red farmhouse more to his liking. “There used to be no income tax up here, but thanks to an ex-lover,” he says conspiratorially, “there is now.” Over the next couple of decades, Fierstein worked between New York and Connecticut, writing the play Casa Valentina and the books for the musicals Newsies and Kinky Boots and playing Tevye on a national tour of Fiddler on the Roof. During the pandemic, the quilting habit picked up, and when the lockdown was eased, he realized he wasn’t exactly eager to return to his life in the city. “Some of it had to do with covid, and some had to do with where I was in my career,” he says. “But also being an artist is constantly trying to figure out who you are.” Fierstein looks briefly wistful until he realizes one of his dogs — he has two, both pony-sized — is about to vomit on a piece of unused dyed fabric.

Over the summer, Fierstein decided it was time to get his quilts out into the world more formally. Until that point, he’d mostly been giving them away as gifts — an all-white quilt with intricate stitching went to Jordan Roth and Richie Jackson for their wedding, another to director Joe Mantello, another to director Jerry Mitchell. So, he says, “I reached out to the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, and they said they plan out their shows five years in advance.” The Keeler Tavern Museum and History Center, also in Ridgefield, was more accommodating. The show — “‘You Made That?’: The Quilting Adventures of Harvey Fierstein” — practically sold out. His former neighbor and collaborator Alan Menken came, as did Fierstein’s “daughter,” the actress Shoshana Bean. Several people from his online quilting community showed up. Some even flew in from Texas. In a quilt he made commemorating the exhibition, he depicts Bean; Roger, the museum’s caretaker; and quilter friend Liza Prior Lucy, whom he met after posting a photo of a quilt he hated on Facebook. Lucy drove in from Pennsylvania to see the show, meeting Fierstein in person for the first time — although from the way he talks about her, you’d think they see each other daily. Every other drawer in his house seems to have scraps from Lucy, which seem to feature in every other quilt he makes. “I wanted to see if the quilts meant anything to anyone but me,” he says. He left with two full autograph books of compliments from attendees.

Over 15 years into this practice, there’s a corresponding quilt for most of Fierstein’s life experiences. He shows me one he made after his friend Chita Rivera died. In the center is Rivera in an iconic Bob Fosse pose from Sweet Charity with a heart quilted over her leg. “The heart on her leg is because she had a car accident,” he says, “and they thought she’d never dance again.” Just weeks after his close friend the actor Gavin Creel died unexpectedly, he made a quilt of a man (Creel) facing away from a floating angel (Fierstein) and a wolf (Fierstein’s dog BoBo): “It’s me reaching out to him, saying, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?’”

Fierstein sometimes invites friends over for what he calls “bitch and stitch” sessions, during which they process the state of “everything.” His quilting circle has largely replaced his city life. The last time he was in Manhattan was to receive a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater, where he wore self-quilted sneakers — something he learned to make in a class at his beloved quilting shop, Cotton Candy Fabrics. “In many ways, I pulled out of the world. I’ve pulled out of a lot of stuff,” Fierstein says as we look at what he calls his “Anti-Trump Quilt,” a scene of skeletons Sieg-hailing against a backdrop of yellow stars and pink triangles. His social life from before the pandemic never fully returned. Telling me about the invites he fields, he says, “Ari Melber is having dinner, and he’s just begging me to come. He said, ‘It’s just gonna be eight of us.’” Fierstein did not attend. “It doesn’t feel like home to me anymore,” he says. “The city is not holding what I need it to hold for me.” He’s still connected to theatrical projects, telling me he’s in frequent communication with Robert O’Hara, who will direct an all-Black production of La Cage aux Folles this summer at New York City Center starring Billy Porter. I try to ask about it, but he isn’t interested. He has a technique he wants to show me: how he uses invisible thread to lay yarn down on a quilt for a thicker border.