You'd never know from looking at the vibrant, confident and innovative works that fill Regina Gouger Miller Gallery that Nancy Crow seriously considered giving up quilt-making a couple of decades ago.

The Ohio artist, credited with being one of the early revolutionaries of the art quilt movement and whose pieces now command five figures, became disillusioned with the restraints of the form's traditional heritage. "By 1990, I had had it with quilt-making," she told an interviewer.

That she found a way out of her creative block is evident in the 55 exquisite quilts -- and I use that designation expansively -- in "Nancy Crow: Works From 1988-2008" on the Carnegie Mellon University campus.

Although Crow has been given solo exhibitions at such prestigious venues as the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., and, most recently, by The Snyderman Gallery, Philadelphia, this is the largest exhibition mounted in her four-decade career. Visitors are expected from distant states to attend Crow's lecture today and the show's opening reception from 5 to 8 p.m. tomorrow, both of which are free and public.

Curator Petra Fallaux selected the quilts to illustrate the way the artist's thinking loops back upon itself in progression that's simultaneously linear and circular.

The evolution illustrated by the quilts is of the eye and of the mind, encompassing aesthetic judgments and the ideas that inform them. Inspiration comes from sources as diverse as folk basketry and repetitious patterns in nature, her mother's housedresses and politics.

One major influence was Anna Williams, an African-American quilter from Baton Rouge, La., whom Crow befriended. Her spontaneous approach to design, achieved without using rulers or templates, had a freeing effect on Crow. Some of her quilts are reminiscent of work from the heralded African-American quilting community of Gee's Bend, Ala. But in the late 1980s, when Crow was developing her expression, the African-American quilt-making community was relatively unknown to art quilters, according to the Snyderman catalog.

Crow, who was born in 1943 in Loudonville, Ohio, is equally aware of the abstractionists and of contemporary artists, Fallaux says. Essentially, as with all fine artists, Crow drinks in the multiple experiences of daily life and reconstitutes them as her own.

For example, "Chinese Souls #5," of 1992, was inspired by a trip to China, during which she witnessed bound young men being paraded through town in cattle trucks before being executed for petty crimes. Back in the States, she created six quilts to memorialize them, comprising rows of colorful circles, often with dark centers, quilted with spirals. "As I worked in the silence of my studio," Crow says, "I could hear the plaintive cries of the young men. Often I had to stop working because I was crying so hard."

Other works have risen from frustration with the war or other social issues, at times in tandem with impatience at what she perceives as her own artistic shortcomings. In formal contrast to the subdued "Souls," for example, are the slashing diagonals of the most current works exhibited (2007), their slender rectangles reverberating with color. But titles, such as "Constructions #84: No!" project a similar internal unrest.

Fallaux includes early works that show experimentation with tradition, such as "Double Mexican Wedding Ring #1" of 1988, as well as the beginning "Constructions #1" of 1995.

It is noteworthy that Crow begins with white cotton and dyes all of her fabric, of late triple-dying for intense color. She cuts and machine-pieces the fabric and hires someone to hand-quilt patterns she's denoted. The latter may run in harmony with or complement to the fabric shapes. It's also notable that Crow includes the name of the quilter along with her own on the back of each quilt.

Crow's creativity appears boundless, her technique impeccable.

The lecture and book signing -- which is co-sponsored by the Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh and begins at 7 tonight in McConomy Auditorium in the University Center -- will illuminate the complex process Crow follows when creating a work.

"It's not about translating a drawing into fabric" Fallaux emphasizes.

Contemporary art quilters work on "design walls" upon which fabric is pinned and shifted as size, scale and color decisions are made. As with painters, the artists periodically walk across the studio to better see a work and evaluate its progress.

That -- combined with the sketchbooks she keeps, her records of past projects, her incorporation of concept, reflection upon current events and contemporary use of color and form -- should quell questions about whether Crow's work should be considered beyond the category of craft.

"Works" continues through Aug. 15. Hours are 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. Admission is free. For information, call 412-268-3618 or visit www.cmu.edu/millergallery.