RIVER RAFT QUILTS
Quilts having to do with rivers
TACKLEBOX: Toujours à Toi, 110” x 72”, 2023, collection Mississippi Museum of Art.
Downriver, Institute 193, Lexington, KY, July 2023
An evolving series of hand-sewn, large scale quilt works made entirely from clothing and textiles donated to my studio from local rural townspeople, these quilted sculptures act as open-ended narrative vessels for stories of personal escape and tales of dream-seeking. The archeology of deciphering trashed textiles leads the way and themes recur: the physical labor of Craft, uncovering human connections across time and distance through personal stories and the infinite promise between mother and child. Drawing from a childhood growing up in a military/river-town that owes its cultural and economic existence to the textile and war industries, I sew my personal odysseys as outfitted rafts and guide-maps. They are set to journey on an imagined river rolling through valleys past the bank-side mills, foundries and army bases -- amidst the Southern economic fallout’s reign upon the natural world. Named “river raft quilts,” these works are outfitted with suggestions of fish nets to store catch, secret money bags, navigational stars, helicopter landing pads, submarine periscopes, children’s velvet pillows, lures, jigs, and escape tunnels. I learned to sew from my mother and YouTube. My sculptural tendencies come from doll-making, an obsession inherited from my maternal grandmother, Matha New Hall of Buena Vista in Marion County, Georgia.
The Alabama Contemporary Art Center, 2023
