2023 [a] Mended Culture, Ketchup City Gallery Installation photos of “My Grandmothers Inheritance” Quilt and Performance Art

Artist Statement

This double sided quilt - a side for each of my grandmothers - is an ongoing project made from inherited quilt squares and fabric. The green and white quilt squares I patched together were originally made by my paternal grandmother who died a year and half before the birth of my first daughter. She was a mathematician, avid quilter and pantry full of everyone’s “favorite” kind of grandmother. The other side of the quilt with its abstract landscape reflects my maternal grandmother who died six months after the birth of my daughter. She was the poet, a spiritual mystic, and “let's go on a walk to find butterflies” kind of grandmother. Each of them experienced great suffering and loss yet knew intimately the healing force of love and sacrifice. 

I long and grieve for both of my grandmother's companionship as I mother. I wonder how my grandmothers’ experiences of motherhood impacts my own? Like what stories or ways of being do we pass down consciously or unconsciously in our bodies as we mother? What threads of connection and dissonance exist between generations? As I cut pieces of fabric and machine sew them together, I recall the fragmented memories I have of their wisdom and stories. With each slow stitch of hand quilting, I embody the inheritance and legacy of artistry and craft that my grandmother’s passed down to me. However, like so many women of their generation, neither of them would have called themselves an artist.

Inspiration and process collages of maternal grandmother’s East Texas home: