QUILTS

DESERT BLOOM

Desert Bloom is a handmade quilt top featuring a traditional variation on the “Geese in The Air” block-pattern, commonly known as a “Wild Goose Chase”. Made from various repurposed polyethylene-based (plastic) feed-sacks and packaging from food and other consumables products, Desert Bloom explores ideas of consumption and control, dominance and reparations, population growth and species success, hubristic rehabilitation and our role in the evolutional ecology of the Utah Lake and Valley. 

   
The quilt’s green and blue tones reference the toxic algal bloom that has overtaken Utah Lake, a direct result of our having pumped raw sewage into the lake up until 1967. and was inspired by the Depression and wartime era practice making clothes, quilts, and household necessities from empty cloth flour and feed sacks, while alluding to our present state as a consumptive, capitalist culture that values convenience, immediacy, and ease-of-use over all else. 

serving as a comparative platform on which to explore and unpack our role as a species in the ecological health of the Utah Lake. As I apply anachronistic ideologies and processes borrowed from a time when resources were limited and every available scrap of material was put to use, to the contemporary materials found in excessive abundance around me, I mull over ideas of growth, change, advancement, “betterment”, ownership, legacy, and how they apply to the future of the Utah Lake and valley. As I carefully measure, cut, and stitch each virescent polyethylene triangle, I allow my thoughts to wander and stretch, allowing these ideas to abstract and layer in terms of time and perspective. I consider the algae; how, as a non-native species in the lake environment, it thrives, quickly establishing its dominance as a majority presence with seemingly effortless ease; how, with little-to-no thought or consideration for existing species or the environment in inhabits, it expands, consuming any and all available space or resources it desires or requires. It is prolific. It relentlessly expands its empire, only growing more abundant and robust the more it consumes…I consider the algae. I consider its origins. And I begin to question exactly who, in the long run, is truly the invasive species.

OCEAN WAVES (LAND-LOCKED) 

For the month of March, 2022, I gathered litter and debris in my neighborhood, keeping fastidious notes on the location, time of day, etc. I had recently conducted an interview with a self-proclaimed “digger” (a bottle and/or coin collector who digs up old refuse deposits buried by the early settler colonialists) from southern Utah and in our conversation, he mentioned several times the increased value of a “find’ that either has unique flaws (shows the artisan’s hand) and/or that are linked to a specific place (of origin/former life). We talked at length about the transmutation of trash and value over time, but ultimately, he was not convinced that modern landfills could ever garner such interest. This quilt is my attempt to both prove him wrong, and to give the diggers of the future something of value. This is a traditional block pattern called “Ocean Waves”. As a landlocked state, most of Utah’s “imports” arrive via Amazon, necessitating SLC’s controversial inland port.  

The Weight explores the personal experience, perspective, and emotional landscape surrounding chosen childlessness through the lens of an individual in her 30s in two parts: Quilt, and Shroud.

The Weight / Quilt, 2021 - present

worn clothing, hand embroidery
 

The Weight / Shroud, 2021 - present

cyanotype, my grandmother's cotton sheets, hand embroidery

Made from fabrics of significant sentimental value and hand embroidered, Quilt and Shroud examine the inherently dualistic nature of choice and consequence by examining the fears, hopes, pressures and reasons that shape each side.

Quilt: A free-form baby quilt made from beloved articles of clothes that I have worn for over a decade that is hand embroidered with all of the reasons why I have chosen not to have children. These reasons range from humorous to somber, political to vulnerable. 

Shroud: A burial shroud made from my grandmother and namesake's last set of sheets, with my body imprinted upon it in cyanotype body-prints. Atop this I have and continue to slowly embroider all of the fears and uncertainties of chosen childlessness and the weight I feel in my role as the end of my family line.