Fine Art Quilts
Quilt For The Unknown Maker, 52x80, September 2020, commercial and upcycled textiles | When no one could cite the makers of the quilts on John Lewis’s deathbed, I followed the Jewish tradition of dedicating a study session on African-American quilts to his honor. In “Bold Improvisations,” the catalogue of the Scott Heffley collection, there is an uncredited rolling wheels quilt that leapt off the page and kicked me in the kishkes because it was so good. Our community is weakened by this denial of credit. In making this quilt to honor these unknown makers, I backed it with a wax batik that was liberated from the mission fields of Wheaton College at the thrift store down the street, hoping to honor those makers who have been colonized and similarly kept from joining our textile community, to our detriment and theirs. #quiltfortheunknownmaker | FOR PURCHASE IN SHOP
Persimmon Champagne, 50.5x64, 2016, commercial and upcycled textiles | Taking advantage of modern batting to combine minimalist hand-quilting with the construction of an updated Drunkard's Path variation, Persimmon Champagne plays within the tradition of gridwork to highlight the movement created by the horizontal "stripes" and the dimensionality created by the raw edges. The commercially printed fabrics reflect Modern quilting’s mid-century aesthetic. | FOR PURCHASE IN SHOP
Not Our Victory Garden, 45x40, April 2020, commercial and upcycled textiles | During WWII, Americans cultivated Victory Gardens to create a surplus of food so that the government could focus resources on the common good of defending democracy. Today, sewists are making masks to fill the massive deficit of pandemic supplies that the government neglected to prepare because it was focused on letting corporations increase their profits. This creates a complex mix of feelings including gratitude for a chance to help, worry for loved ones and rage that we are put in this position. It is not the simple patriotism of a Victory Garden and it is exhausting. The organic edges, hand-quilting and machine-washing communicate the weathered landscape of a backyard plot. The backing is pieced of remnants from the batiks I used for the masks I made. | FOR PURCHASE IN SHOP
Earthseed Quilt, Part 1: Prophet, 90x96, August 2022, commercial and upcycled textiles | Octavia Butler's books foretold most of the societal chaos that we are now experiencing while also providing a framework for how we survive. Her texturized portrait is the center that holds this medallion quilt together, amidst the concentric frames of patchwork static and paths to journey. | FOR PURCHASE IN SHOP
Ruby Delores Margaret, August 2022, commercial and upcycled textiles | The second iterative arrangement of the elements constructed for my Earthseed Quilt series, Diamonds plays with a grid layout and applique. Octavia Butler. Nalo Hopkinson. Monica Byrne. Gabriel Echeverri. Maritere Mix. Molly Costello Unknown Nepali batik artist. Unknown Guatemalan textile artist. Rashida Coleman-Hale. Rae Ritchie. Shannon Downey. Juanita Seavoy. Phoebe Wahl. Blue Hawkins. Christian Robinson. Alexander Henry. Northcott. Cotton and Steel. Cori Dantini. Sarah Jane. Heather Ross. Tula Pink. J.K. Rowling. | FOR PURCHASE IN SHOP
Earthseed Quilt, Part 4: Octavia's Neighborhood, 36x40, September 2022, commercial and upcycled textiles | Much of Octavia Butler’s work and particularly the Patternist series explores how people organize themselves together in groups, and where “special” people literally fit inside a community. Afrofuturism knows that geography matters as power is redistributed. Jewish history knows that ghettos become targets. My experiences in public policy and education reform certainly confirm that where we draw our boundaries affects funding and staffing and voting in favor of those who already have access to money and housing security. How do we remake our physical systems to promote equitable communities? | FOR PURCHASE IN SHOP
Earthseed Quilt, Part 5: Cousins, 80x32, October 2022, commercial and upcycled textiles| The more our greed eliminates habitats for our animal cousins, the more they find pockets of our habitats to fight from. Improvizationally constructed on the concept of building log cabins out of log cabins, each square holds at its center, an artisan print of a commonly encountered (by humans) animal. | FOR PURCHASE IN SHOP
Milk and Honey Love, Part 1, 72x59, April 2024, commercial and upcycled textiles | This quilt series lifts up the work of women's hands in an eye-catching assemblage of embroidery, needle felting, silkscreen and upcycled clothing and domestic textiles in a spectrum of yellow and green fabrics. | FOR PURCHASE IN SHOP
Milk and Honey Love, Part 2: Beyond Caring, 68x62, December 2023, commercial and upcycled textiles | An homage to the Lookingglass Theater's 2017 production of Beyond Caring, the best play I have ever seen. Directed by David Schwimmer, a yellow uniform shirt, constructed for hard use, forms the infrastructural theme of this challenge project for the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild. An industrial apron and a child's t-shirt also swirl throughout the piece. | FOR PURCHASE IN SHOP
Mermaid Marisol, 35x70, June 2019, commercial and upcycled textiles | In the book Julián Is A Mermaid by Jessica Love, a little boy imagines the members of his abuela’s water aerobics class as mermaids, because it’s not just slender white girls who get to be magical creatures. With the permission of the illustrator and in a nod to Sunbonnet Sue, I created Mermaid Marisol based on the original drawings. The figures are hand-appliqués and the hand-guided quilting through wool batting creates currents and eddies from their dancing. The binding is a metallic shot cotton appropriate to the brilliance of the story being told within its frame.
Everybody Gonna Shine, 54x32, June 2020, commercial and upcycled textiles | Lizzo and George Floyd both call Minneapolis home. This quilt depicts the breath of song offered to those who cannot breathe. It’s our animal impulse to be attracted to things like the sun, the golden ratio and people who look like ourselves but when we consciously decenter these evolutionary tendencies, the sun doesn’t grow any less bright. But room is made for Lizzo to shine, too. And if Lizzo’s going to shine, she says everybody gets to shine. Hand-quilted and started in a workshop hosted by Shruti Dandekar, the tulle overlay honors the tutus of her stage outfits and it is bound in sparkle gold Essex linen. | FOR PURCHASE IN SHOP
Quilt For The Unknown Maker, 52x80, September 2020, commercial and upcycled textiles | When no one could cite the makers of the quilts on John Lewis’s deathbed, I followed the Jewish tradition of dedicating a study session on African-American quilts to his honor. In “Bold Improvisations,” the catalogue of the Scott Heffley collection, there is an uncredited rolling wheels quilt that leapt off the page and kicked me in the kishkes because it was so good. Our community is weakened by this denial of credit. In making this quilt to honor these unknown makers, I backed it with a wax batik that was liberated from the mission fields of Wheaton College at the thrift store down the street, hoping to honor those makers who have been colonized and similarly kept from joining our textile community, to our detriment and theirs. #quiltfortheunknownmaker | FOR PURCHASE IN SHOP
Self-Portrait: Mending, 36.5x68.5, October 2021, commercial and upcycled textiles | From a 6 ft tall field of fabric stained glass shards, curving shapes resolve into the form of a fat female nude. The eye rests in the diverse flesh tones of breast, belly, and hips, then move toward bright textured nipples. Joyful organic spirals of quilting pop in relief against the fragmented grids. The hand-applique'ed dimensional banner depicted at the base reads, "Sacred." As the viewer leans in to pick out the details, it can be determined that the figure is pieced with bias tape as the "lead" to create the window by joining the blocks that are unevenly aligned with intention. Hand- stitching with gold thread and silk patches repair the integrity of the laundered quilt. It is framed with a metallic linen binding. The design is inspired by a commissioned portrait by Hannah Senger. | FOR PURCHASE IN SHOP
Patriarchal Tension, 20x36, September 2022, commercial and upcycled textiles | “u just be minding ur business and here comes a man" I laughed with recognition and relief at this Tweet because i secretly worry it’s just me who keeps falling for it when i’m being thrown under the bus. How many times has this described my life as a femme in relationship with the Patriarchy? Since my dad died, i am often forced to examine our tension now that it has gone slack. When my sewing machine's tension also gave out, I created this concenptual art piece as I turned to my quilting community for advice on how to fiddle with it until it stitched true again. Dimensional elements preserve mistakes made in the mending. | FOR PURCHASE IN SHOP
Just Because I Don't, 20x30, July 2022, commercial and upcycled textiles | Rust and charcoal and sky blues suggest landscapes in this abstract improv gridwork with hand-guided whorls of thread winds as the quilting motif. | FOR PURCHASE IN SHOP
Uvalde Log Cabin, 51x51, May 2022, commercial and upcycled textiles | How do we deal with news of human suffering on a global scale? Voltaire wrote Candide as a way to process a 1755 earthquake, which he never would have had to know about except as a tale brought to town by merchants. But communication technology required him to witness the event. And we must honor what we witness with our time and our presence, which is prayer. On the day that communication technology had me witness a man kill 19 children and their teachers while their parents listened helplessly outside as the police did worse than nothing, I slowed down, set my intention, and put my phone away so that although I cannot weep anymore even for this, I would follow Voltaire's advice to cultivate my "garden" by giving the suffering my time and presence in making this quilt. It honors all parents with their hands to work and hearts to G-d, to build a "log cabin" and feather that nest with crochet, sweet curtains and chic abstract trees of life. | FOR PURCHASE IN SHOP
Navel of God, 19x15, October 2021, commercial and upcycled textiles | The quilt captures a post-partum body as a celestial nursery. The shot cottons have been laundered to evoke the softness of a body that has nurtured and nourished. Hand-guided spirals and hand-applique'ed stars create constellations and galaxies of life and joy and miracles. | FOR PURCHASE IN SHOP
Pomegranate Bat Mitzvah, 72x90, 2017, commercial and upcycled textiles | Utilizing the medallion's unique ability to balance saturation with with rectangles, Pomegranate Bat Mitzvah reflects the liminal space of early adolescence, appealing to a teen girl's modern color sensibilities, with nods back to the pink of her childhood. Made to honor the hard work of and family love for Ellie Mayers. | SOLD
Ruby Delores Margaret, 70x92, November 2018, commercial and upcycled textiles | In Danville, IL, my great-grandmother Ruby Baumgart was a maker and with flair (although my 97 year old grandmother remembers being embarassed that she would do something as low as set up the quilting frame in the parlor, of all places.) After Ruby's death, my father's mother Margaret Murphy took the perfectly pieced Dresden plates made of fabrics she recognized from the aprons and dresses of her relatives and asked the local Lutheran sewing circle to finish the quilt with hot pink sashing and hand-quilting. Although her sister led that group, when I ask Grandma to tell the story, she always leaves Delores Miller out. When I notice the omission, Grandma shrugs with a sparkle in her eye and says, "Well, she helped." I have no sisters of my own but this gives me a glimpse of what my own daughters are in for. One of my aunts will likely inherit the original quilt, so I made a modern color variation of the traditional pattern, cutting one blade per fabric from my stash and hand-piecing the Dresden plates. The centers are hand-appliqued fabric salvaged from the beloved couch my brothers and I all rubbed our faces against during naps as kids. I quilted the quilt with a hand-guided organic spiral motif. | SOLD
Je M'adore, 30x36, July 2018, commercial and upcycled textiles | I believe that our future is already written in the margins of history. So I juxtaposed the prophetic words of the contemporary African poet Ijeoma Umebinyuo (published in a tweet) on a printed background depicting the names of Baby Boomer American women. The past has been possible by making women doubt themselves and their value by setting an impossible standard for physicality as almost the only measure worth working toward. We will only progress if we begin to radically adore ourselves and to act out of that power. It reads, "I have no interest in being anyone but myself. I have centuries of soft, stubborn and beautiful women whose blood I carry. I adore me." | SOLD