What a powerful source of memory, of honoring those who we have lost to AIDS.

As I have written about a few times already , I have been exploring the many squares on the AIDS Memorial Quilt, and have been remembering especially two men who were important to my Mom, to our community, and to my perception and experience with the death tolls from AIDS. Almost as soon as I learned, via their website, that the Quilt is stored and the foundation headquartered here in Atlanta, I called, left a message, and asked to visit–especially to see the two squares I had been pouring over, Craig’s and Parnell’s.

Photos on Craig's quilt square, of Parnell Peterson (left) and Craig Koller, from Parnell's family

Richie, a veteran of the NAMES Project Foundation, called me back after the MLK holiday weekend, and I planned a visit for today. This morning I spent some time crying, touching the quilt, reading the many lovely words, poems, thoughts contributed to each of their squares, and learned more about these two men via the wonderful memorial that this Quilt provides. It provides a way to remember, in a very communal and large-scale way, yet allowing for quite private and personal time with those who are being remembered. Richie pulled up the information on these two squares, 2744 (Parnell’s) and 5508 (Craig’s), so I could see where they had traveled, where they had been requested, and where and when they were each on display.

I learned that the demographic who has been contributing the most new squares–they receive on average about 400 new squares each year–are nieces. Girls my age, who have memories, however clear or unclear, of their uncles who died while we were young, and who have now reached the age in which remembering them properly has been an important part of grieving, or becoming an adult, of understanding how this illness has devastated families. I am exactly that generation, that demographic, though I have to consider myself an honorary niece only.

I made a donation in honor of my parents, who have been caring, compassionate examples for my brothers and me, and in honor of Craig and Parnell, obviously, and for each of their families. The wonderful (small) staff gave me a book of some quilt squares, and a calendar I have already poured over several times. I felt so welcomed, and depending on how much longer I am in Atlanta, I want to help quilt squares together as they need me. Seeing a modest and hard-working organization and staff like that also reminds me that I am in the right field; non-profits, working to educate and engage the public, and ensuring that life has been well-spent by taking care of the issues that matter most.

Take a moment to drink in how enormous each panel of this quilt is. Each square is intentionally 3 feet by 6 feet, about the size of a human grave. I was not prepared for the commanding presence, and for how much more meaningful seeing each component up-close truly is.

That's me next to Craig's square

The portion my family contributed to Craig's square, which is on the bottom, in the very middle

Parnell McKenna Peterson's square (double-sized, like Craig's). The entire bottom is littered with lovely messages to him.

I especially enjoyed seeing all of the contributions made by people who loved each of them. Their lives and memories matter to many.

My mom, Craig, and some other of their high school friends here, also part of Craig's square. Craig is on the bottom left.

Parnell

Craig

Craig, in the center of his beautiful square. (Hazard of storing thousands of quilt squares, creases.)

The modest headquarters of the largest piece of community folk art in the world. The Quilt weighs 54 tons. They're all stored here.

Take-home goodies: book, calendar. There are very generous, wonderful people taking care of this quilt.

Its way of lessening the distance between artists, authors, and other people we admire is my absolute favorite reason for the micro-blogging social network. (A close second place is how it has changed the way I think in my own head. In pithy little statements on life and what’s occurring in mine.)

I have squealed in delight when a respected writer or journalist responds to me on Twitter. It’s like little brushes with fame, or relative fame, and with people whose work you greatly admire but that you would almost never meet in your entire life. Yet here, on Twitter, it’s like they are those living, breathing people, who pass their thoughts along into the Twitter-sphere like the rest of us.

The relationship between authors/writers and social networking is also changing our perception and idea of what exactly makes the writer/artist. And as the title of this post suggests (and the NYT article from which it came), the digital age is transforming the way we understand authorship. I, after all, am also a digital author, this website as my outlet for things that would only otherwise exist in my head or among my friends and family (who can only hear me ramble about some things so many times before tiring, understandably). This blog has changed the way I communicate with everyone around me, and so has Twitter. So it makes sense that it is doing the same thing to professional writers, authors, journalists, artists everywhere, best-sellers or no. Some authors become humorists on Twitter, as it becomes an outlet for personas they didn’t have an outlet for elsewhere. The internet is well-known to affect people’s actual or perceived personas. The fascinating New York Times article on authors tweeting is well worth your time:

At their best, social media democratize literature and demystify the writing process. As Suzanne Fischer tweets of following her favorite author, “It’s fascinating to learn what an unsettling & emotional process it is for her to write characters into the world.” When that mythic author comes down for a chat, she gets followers.

Some of my favorite people to follow on Twitter:

@patricox / Patrick Cox, reporter for PRI’s The World, and creator/host of The World in Words podcast on all things language.

@elizabethlittle / Author Elizabeth Little. She has the best sense of humor. I think we would be excellent real-life friends.

@jenny8lee / Jennifer 8. Lee: Journalist, freelancer, author, Chinese-American. Her real middle name is 8.

I find him interesting in his amorphous and fluid form and interpretation of art, connecting what we think of as “Art” with unconvention and with blogging and microblogging (i.e. Twitter and very brief forms of connecting online), combining his artistic impulses with his gift for words, writing pithy and prophetic bits. That’s a kind of artistry I greatly admire, especially in the face of the Chinese State And All Its Men. There is quite a difference–and a kind of bold bravery I cannot imagine–between being an artist in a free and functioning democracy and being an outspoken artist in a state which does not value or embrace free speech, open access to information, or the fullest extent of self-expression–even if it means criticizing the men upstairs.

In his Time interview he was asked “What would you like to see in China?” This was part of his brilliantly explained answer:

We need clear rules to play the game. We need to have respect for the law. If you play a chess game but after two or three moves you change the rules, how can people play with you? Of course you will win, but after 60 years you will still be a bad chess player because you never meet anyone who can challenge you. What kind of game is that? Is it interesting? I’m sure the people who put me in jail, they’re so tired. This game is not right, but who is going to say, ‘Hey, let’s play fairly’?

I’ve been studying China, Chinese politics, language, culture and history, for more than six years now, and my own thoughts on its political system have shifted at times between the two most polar ends of the argument: that either the “Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics” official plan has merit, is working, can improve and continue; or that China will inevitably give way democracy because it has already given much up to a free market economic system, and its people still hold memories of the extreme poverty and problems that stemmed from early plans in the early years after the Communist Revolution. People–around the world–have spent much time waxing on the future of China’s political system. No one has explained its crucial fissure in its system so well as Ai Weiwei, himself a son of China, and the actual son of a revolutionary poet.

This pattern had been on my Amazon wish list forever, silently intimidating me with the giant-scale circles and all those tiny pieces. See, I’ve made several quilts, but they’ve been deceptive to outsiders, because every time I’ve made up my own pattern and motif, going off things I’ve seen and loved, but essentially, designing each myself. Following patterns is actually hard, and I wanted to force myself to stick to a method, follow directions, and patiently cut out all the pieces ahead of time, per the instructions, so that by the time you hate the giant queen-size you’ve set out to make and cut all those hundreds of pieces, you actually get down to the sewing, and time flies by, and then you have a massive, beautiful quilt top ready to be layered with batting and backing and grace your bed.

My goal for 2012 is to take this baby somewhere and learn to use a long-arm quilter myself, taking the required course and then using the circular quilting pattern that comes with Schmidt’s design for Single Girl. I started this quilt on the day after my 24th birthday, September 25, and so I want to finish the quilting by my birthday this year, my 25th birthday. I’ve made four quilts, this is my fifth one, and three of the first four have been gifts. The only one I’ve kept, a throw-size in all fabrics I loved, is wonderfully experimental, including my first raggedy machine-quilting stitches on my own machine. It’s a lovely token of early quilting technique, filled with trial and error (read: mistakes). I love it for that, but I am excited to tackle this quilt, a giant one that is made for my bed, and make it a beautiful work of art, showing how I’ve grown in my skill since I began quilting in 2008.

I can’t make it to my final quilt class today, because I’m handicapped from recent foot surgery, but I needed to post some pictures for the other ladies in my class, as well as our teacher, Diana. I hope you guys can post some for me to see, I’m really sad I will be missing seeing the final products! Please post them here, or e-mail them to me, or put them on Pinterest–something!

One circle, four quarters together

Graphic

In a bunch

Detail

Circle love

Happy with the two-tone scheme I chose for this quilt. All reds and creamy whites.

Across my bed, all sixteen circles, each turning a little differently

1954 sampling of Christmas decorations, which were one way that people made use of electricity in the Tennessee Valley, and the reason someone was paid by the TVA to document and photograph these things.

One day last week, I spent the morning compiling and digitizing documents to go in an exhibit case we have in the lobby of the Archives, and the goal was to fill it with Christmas-y documents that we have there at the Archives. Hard when you’re a non-religious institution that does not keep records of… I don’t know, religious events? So I found some WWI draft cards with names like “Dasher” and “Reindeer” and “Santy Claus” (A REAL PERSON!) and the rest of the reindeer. I also pulled a man named Partridge and a man named Peartree, my favorite pairing.

Another view of those wise men creeping towards that branch thing.

But we used some TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) photos from the 1950s, where someone had gone around and documented what people did with electricity. (It is wonderfully fantastic that someone has this job. I imagine an amateur photographer trying to expand his novice abilities.) One of those uses for electricity was Christmas decoration, in the home and outside the home. It is a fantastic collections of photos, and I was ogling over them, studying every bit of each photo–having just ended an entire semester in material culture class where we studied kitsch, consumerism, and what people buy, make, and keep in their lives. So this set of photos was an absolute treat to pour over, one at a time. I want to digitize some for myself, they are so special. So far I have digitized three of them, the one above, and two that I will be printing and framing for my mom.

They are accidentally artistic. I think whoever was taking the photos was trying to make them look classy and professional, setting up backdrops, and placing each item in a vignette. But the background walls, floors, electricity outlets, and other elements belie all that, making them ironic, stark and cold, and all the more fascinating. The photographer obviously had the rights kinds of professional equipment. Someday, I would love to write some sort of scholarly piece on the kitsch of Christmas decor in the 1950s, using this goldmine of photos.

Snowman couple, with illuminated "snow" behind them

Each one was more mistakenly charming than the last. I was examining the light fixtures, the wall colors, the window blinds, the chairs, the floor tiles, the table designs, and the use of shadows–all elements surrounding the actual focal points. I also found each item to grandly reflect the same kind of kitschy things we have continued to use over the years, and that take on more memory and sentimental meaning for us as the years go by. We realize over time the things we loved as children or adults may have been a bit tacky, or cheap, or downright weird, but this often endears holiday decorations to us more. We keep plenty of things we’ve collected for the holidays that we might not otherwise keep, because of the way we feel around this season, the memories we keep of family members being around us, or of the effort they may have put into making an item. Also, since we don’t have to look at them all year, and they are packed away all that time, they are welcomed back into our vistas each year more cheerfully than if we had had to look at the holly creation atop a dresser all year round.

We didn’t talk extensively about holiday fare in my class, but we talked about style, kitsch, memory items, family heirlooms, items associated with loss, love, memorial, and all of these things influence our relationship to and meaning applied to the holiday season, and Christmas.

A tad scary-looking tree taking over this door

I know there are particular things I will never forget in homes that have been the backdrop to Christmas memories: I have vey specific memories of my Auntie Nessa’s house from the early and mid ’90s, plush carpets, low lights, Amy Grant playing, a very tall Christmas tree, and villages set up with snow and a pathway across one of her long tables. (This is a strange memory to keep, since we have not been to that house since this era, she no longer owns it, nor hosts Christmas events.) My grandma and grandpa’s houses, both the Maple Street and Birch Street locations, in Kingsford, harbor Christmas Eve memories too, warm lighting and protection from the outside cold, so many cookies–the best gingerbread–I could never begin to eat them all, or fathom recreating the amount. Loving family around me, socked feet, Christmas clothing, taking pictures. Grandma’s tree with the ornaments we’d all made for her decades ago by now. And my parents’ homes through the years, always filled with happy decorations, numerous themed trees gracing corners and cozy spots throughout. My mom often did up a few together, a little Christmas tree forest, including the Happy Meal toy tree that took us upwards of 15 years to collect toys for, and took a few years in construction itself as well–this tree continues to make children happy and joyful, even as my Mom’s own children have grown and moved out of the house. I always loved how very tall and thin it is, taking on a caricature nature that reflects all the playful toys that grace its branches; some of those ditties are from the late 1980s, my earliest days of youth. Vintage!

I have wonderful memories of Christmas holidays across many homes, northern and southern locales. Some have been frozen and snowy, others bright and downright sunny, and they all mean something to me, combining to create my own meaning of the season, and adding to how I create my own space in my adult homes each year.

Anyway, these historical images got my rejoicing about Christmas decorating of days gone by, when my Dad was a small boy and my Mom was not yet born. I don’t know how prevalent these pieces were back then, in 1954, but it’s worth investigating, in a future project, and definitely worth having kept, for the moment.

Super-shine reflects back in this first in a series of table-toppers on a bookcase/side table combo piece.

The shadows, the plug, fantastic unintentional artistry.

Another tabletopper

At some point I'm not even sure these use electricity. Or if they do, it's less clear how. TVA documentation getting a bit arty?

A cozy corner, with illuminated tabletop branches and vintage home decor magazine.

Candle pieces, wreath, framing '50s long table and blinds and curtains

The back-end of a reindeer hangs in the middle of the door's wreath...

And the front-end of the same reindeer, on the other side of the door.

I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday season, spending time with family and good friends, recalling years past, and making new memories. This includes creating your own craft, art, and yes, kitsch, to add cheer and spirit to this lovely time of year.

The photographer took several shots of this quirky, mod-style Mary and Baby Jesus scene. Rightly so, it's quite fantastic.

Friday

Completed Christmas-themed exhibit case we composed at the Archives, using 1950s photographs of Christmas decorations (TVA-documented) and old newspaper clippings, photos, and WWI draft cards featuring the names of reindeer (Blitzen, Rudolph, etc.) and other holiday-themed names (Chris Kringle, Santy Claus, Partridge and Peartree).

Single Girl quilt: Home from work, I needed to see four of my sixteen squares sewn together.

Ormsby's for friends catch-up, drinks, and beet salad (yum).

Saturday

Root House visit, Saturday morning, to see Katie and smell the delicious smells of an 1850s Marietta kitchen. They were all in dress for the Marietta pilgrimage tour of homes.

Then, to the High Museum to see the Picasso to Warhol modern art exhibit (we got a deal on tickets). Ben ponders some other art. He approves.

Saturday, 2 p.m. Ben is angry at this, the piece of art he hates most: the white canvas painted white, on a white wall. Ben is very angry!

Pablo Picasso, Girl before a Mirror, 1932. All the paintings in the exhibition are owned by the Museum of Modern Art. Pretty impressive, as I would expect.

We "make" art, by adding fingers pointing to circles. Pablo Picasso.

Henri Matisse, Woman with a Veil. It was one of my very favorites of the day.

Henri Matisse, another favorite. The colors!

A Jackson Pollock classic! This is another that Ben is skeptical about, but I was just excited to be seeing a real Pollock. It was interesting to see some of his work before this famous "drip" phase of his work, of which they also had several.

I loved the work of Romare Bearden, who does a lot with mixed media and collage. I'm really drawn to pieces like this. Google his stuff!

Another Romare Bearden, using a very old and battered patchwork quilt against a woman who's made to reflect the ancient artistic body form that we know as Egyptian.

Jasper Johns, a Georgia-born modern artist, works in familiar images and print-making to make you think about things that are everyday in more conscious ways. Loved the numbers.

The Real Andy Warhol Version Of This Super Famous and Much Reused Image. So cool to see the image the started this iconic pattern. Then again, Warhol would ponder how much of him as the artist is really in these, "the originals," anyway. ;)

The Soup Cans. All along a whole wall dozens of times, so emblematic of all that is Warhol's pondering of the reprint.

And again

And again. Am I Warhol yet?

Pretty tree in midtown

Coffee break at Octane

Snowy winter cupcakes (with advent-gift decorations), episodes of Parks & Rec, and one-person sewing bee to round out Saturday night.

Sunday

The binding goes on Ben's Christmas present, so near to the end now.

New undies and popcorn for advent! There is nothing better than new underwear for Christmas, really.

Some of Ben's awesome advent gifts from my mom, including a half-zip sweater and requisite fun Star Wars items.

Paul's advent, Upper Peninsula Michigan playing cards, with photos of Yooper things. The Iron Mountain ski lift where we used to live, there.

Avery helps Ben cook Cheater's Chili, our all-day-stewing best-chili-ever recipe.

We document the damage of earlier burns to my hands, from the hot oil when browning the meat for chili. See the bulbous blisters?!

Homework and another advent, a yummy candle. Organizing the many documents that compose our Atlanta History exhibit for the Atlanta airport, making sure we have everything we need to print this hundreds-of-pages document on Monday. And Ben helped too.

Then, finally, Dexter on Showtime at 9, one of the best reasons to start a new week. Season 6 is so, so good. I forgot to take a picture because the episode was so good.

Happy week, everyone!

I can finally post pictures of the gift I made for Elodie Watson’s first birthday, since her party was yesterday. She has two math teachers as parents, and so I was struck one night (literally, while driving home around 1 a.m.) that I should make numbers in the same way that I have made oversize letters before. And I already had this amazing pink corduroy that I couldn’t resist, but had yet to do anything with. I cut out pattern pieces, which I gave to Ashley so that she can make more numbers (and therefore build to more complicated and bigger number combinations), and made a 0 through 9, plus an addition, subtraction, and equals sign in grey flannel. The edges are raw, so there’s no turning out or anything–adds more character.

I love the color, that right pink is so much fun. The image I had in my head was Elodie just wandering around with a number in-hand, since they are cuddly and squishy and a perfect size for her. This was even more fun than the letters I’ve done before, since it did not require making 26+ pieces, and because numbers are an equally important component of learning for the little ones.

So fun, so cute.

Cutting out the numbers with these cute pattern pieces. I just printed them from Word, using a giant size and a font that had simple sans serif numbers. Then traced them onto template plastic.

Cuddly arithmetic

All in a row

Wrapped up in paper to match the numbers theme. I left the 1 out to be part of her card, since she turned 1. :)

In a pile!

I told her I love the headboard she made for her own room, and that I wish to make my own as soon as I can afford to put more money into my own bed/frame/headboard situation, and she said, “Oh, if I can make it, you certainly can, I’m not that crafty.” Uh, ma’am? You created Design*Sponge. There’s at least a little crafty in you.

Cool to meet her!

My signed copy

Sources of vast inspiration

Sometimes, work and play intersect, overlap, combine. For this week’s material culture class, we read four selections, chapters and articles, on design and aesthetic. One of the pieces was a chapter from John M. Vlach’s book The Afro-American Tradition in Decorative Arts, and the particular chapter was on African American historical quilting motifs.

Just a few days earlier, I had read a fantastic article from the Wall Street Journal on Denyse Schmidt–easily my favorite designer involved in quilts and modern textiles on this earth. In it, she describes her style as “neo-hillbilly,” which is a remarkably apt term, and one that I thought really got to the heart of her improvisational, old-timey, non-conformist, simple designs and motifs. Nearly every time I browse her quilts and patterns, I find something else that inspires me. Sometimes I want to copy her, other times I want to use a technique or a kind of aesthetic she’s used to head off in my own direction. I find her entire perspective on quilting fascinating and stimulating.

Men's weave textile, Ghana; image from Vlach's book

He goes into great detail about West African applique techniques, patterns, and purpose, but the revelatory part came after, with his description and illustration of the strip quilt.

Denyse Schmidt, in that article, had been talking about the value of state quilt documentation projects for her own inspiration; those are initiatives that were taken up in the 1980s and ’90s in nearly every state, urging people to bring in any quilt they knew of, old and ratty, any condition, to document each one and what the owners knew about them at that time, so that their histories could be collected and kept, as an important part of American traditional culture, and as a true collection of Americana art.

My favorite strip quilt from Vlach's selected examples

I had begun researching these documentation projects, and found the largest compendium of the projects in one place: The Quilt Index. (Browse at your own risk! It may consume your day.) There are also numerous books, by state, on their quilt documentations, including the processes, some of the most significant quilts, and if you’re lucky, directions for some of them.

Everything was colliding at once: quilt documentation projects as a source of “hill-billy” and traditional inspiration, from days when making your quilt meant using scraps, old clothing, and feed sacks–sometimes from textiles you have woven yourself–and accurate design came second to having a warm blanket to sleep under; Denyse Schmidt’s minimal take on quilting and what constitutes artistic design; and Vlach’s chapter on both of these concepts placed right smack dab in their historical place.

All the sudden, I turn to a page and see an “improvisational log cabin motif,” identical the one on the quilt I am currently making. Next to it, for comparison, was the precise, mathematical European log cabin form. Here was one of the core bases for my personal inspiration: southern quilting, and African American design aesthetic. As Vlach points out, this approach greatly resembles an improvisational approach to music that creates jazz, in that you must have a mastery of the form of the craft before you can begin to improvise. And African American women who lived in slavery were creating a counterculture exactly their own when they quilted, preserving a cultural memory within the larger colonial and early American traditions surrounding them.

My improvisational Log Cabin quilt, inspired originally for me by Denyse Schmidt

The photos of quilts accompanying Vlach’s text were each more fabulous and inspiring and random and thoughtful as the next. (Sadly, I checked out the book from the school library and was sad to find that the book itself is in black and white, meaning I cannot see the pieces in color.) The strip motif derives from the African tradition of men’s textile weaving, in which long pieces are woven on a loom and then cut into strips of the right length to be sewn together to form a blanket. For the first time in my life, I felt an itch to learn to use a loom, to make some of this stuff myself and build up a long, winding bundle that I could cut up and stitch into one quilt front.

Some were so simple they were stunningly curved and mix-matched and all too easy to start planning. Others were more composed, but still with that off-kilter charm, the very thing I was finding I wanted in my quilts, and the very thing that Denyse Schmidt makes sure is in each of hers. Not surprisingly, when I found myself in one of my favorite quilt stores a few days later, I ended up leaving with a quilt’s worth of fabrics in a palette that I am calling “menswear + African.”

By the way, I am already working on two other quilts right now. So yes, this makes three. And I have two jobs and go to grad school full time. What?

But that’s why I have Be The Ink, to compile and share my ideas when I can’t execute them anywhere else, for the time being.

My working menswear + African palette -- for my next project

Stove Eye quilt, from the book Great Lakes, Great Quilts, part of Michigan's quilt documentation effort

Kaffe Fassett meets African American tradition: these are the exact same pattern, also a stand-out piece

This book is a treasure trove of everyday patterns inspiring quilt motifs (Kaffe Fassett)

Flying Geese have been calling me name everywhere. I am going to make a quilt front using this motif. This was the ceiling pattern at Japan Fest, and from my angle, Flying Geese!

]]> http://betheink.com/2011/09/to-be-off-balance-but-still-under-control/feed/ 0 http://betheink.com/2011/09/art-was-not-separate-from-everyday-experience/ http://betheink.com/2011/09/art-was-not-separate-from-everyday-experience/#comments Sun, 04 Sep 2011 00:35:14 +0000 Jcedens http://betheink.com/?p=1443

I went to the Atlanta History Center for the sole purpose of visiting their many exhibits–for the first time in my life. This is really sad, considering I have a degree in history, I’m earning a master’s student studying museums, and I’ve lived in Atlanta for more than five years. In my defense, I’ve been there once to see one specific exhibit, and we also got a tour of the innards of the place, including their giant holdings areas down below where they keep the collection pieces that are not on display in exhibits. I have also been to their Kenan Research Center on several occasions for research purposes. But this was my first time going to meander my way through their permanent and temporary exhibitions.

Folk art meets daily life necessity: rice hulling mortar and pestels, circa 1800s (used into the 1900s). This is the most enormous mortar and pestel I've ever seen.

I knew I needed to pick one to highlight for yet another assigned exhibit review for a class (this makes about the fifth review I’ve done), but I didn’t really go in thinking of any one in particular–especially not, for some reason, the folk art exhibit, which I’d heard one or a few classmates discuss before but never given much thought. But this semester, I’m taking a class on Material Culture, on the things we adorn with a human touch, and make with a purpose, be it necessity, pleasure, tool, comfort or any other reason we have to create something. In the wake of this summer’s interior design class, I already feel that I am more aware of the conscious designs and historical components surrounding aesthetic, style, and the use of the things around us.

The first two weeks of class already have me thinking even harder about the things we design, make, buy, use, sell, throw away, repurpose. It was truly serendipitous that after a few other galleries, I wandered over to the Shaping Traditions: Folk Art in a Changing South gallery while deciding where next to spend my time. I had been planning to review a different exhibit, for a different class than Material Culture, but here it was in front of me, and there on the introductory panel was John Burrison, a professor at my school and friend of many of my professors, in a photograph with some of the pieces in the collection. I had a memory flashback and realized that I remembered learning that most of this collection–thousands of items–was his–he had been collecting southern folk art since the 1970s, and turned his collection and his lifetime of knowledge on folklife into an exhibit–a stunning and approachable work in itself.

From this leftover bit of mussel shell, you can see how they made buttons out of them. Incredible!

There on the same panel was a name that suddenly meant a lot to me: Henry Glassie. I had only just finished reading one of his books for my class, his 1968 classic within the folklife field, Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States. I got really excited, and from there, it was several hours later before I noticed how much time I had been spending at each panel, examining each piece of folk craft, studying the selection of photos that accompanied throughout.

My favorite part, obviously really, was the section devoted entirely to southern textiles, quilts, motifs, and influential styles. The designers came up with a truly ingenious method to display and preserve the six quilts within the exhibit: each one rolled out on its own giant display board, once prompted by a visitor who pushes a button–which sits below a description of the type, material, quilter, and estimated year of creation. I must have pushed those buttons more than a dozen times, engrossed in their pattern and fabric choices, old as they were. Each was so beautiful, and they combined to tell a distinctly diverse story of the variety of quilting styles and influences that play into southern quilting.

The clever system within the exhibit that only exposes the quilts to light when visitors choose to roll them out--it's also fun to use!

The textile section had an essential "touch me" section, for those of us who were dying to feel the quilts and had to contain ourselves.

"Barn Rising" variation of a Log Cabin quilt, early 1900s

"Eight Point Star" variation with strips, by Estella Daniel, Emerson County, Georgia, 1930s

"Whig's Defeat," by Susan Loyd, Rome, Georgia, 1856

"Brick Work" and strip pattern, Annie Howard, Madison, Georgia, 1957

(Read on for a bit more about the themes of the exhibit; it’s worth a few minutes!)

The exhibit was consciously created to revolve around its stunning artifacts, to tell the larger story of the relationship between folk craft and folk art in past and present southern life. The overarching thesis the exhibit aims to impress upon visitors is that there has been both continuity and change in southern folk art, and that the relationship within it—southerners and their handmade products—is an important component in the history of the South.

Craftsmen-made ladderback chairs

The exhibit has an incredible collection of folk furniture, with all the requisite textiles, potter-made earthenware, and other pieces that defined home life in preindustrial Georgia.

Modern-day artists and immigrant groups who have added their cultural traditions to the South in the last half century are featured near the end of the exhibit space, proving that folk art in the region, while no longer necessary for our work or daily life essentials, is still an important part of our cultural lives; we are surrounded by the artistry and traditional techniques of those who continue to practice and pass on our folk arts. Shaping Traditions tells this story through the objects that define the subject.

Go see it.

Ben stopped by to say hi to my camera

Ben's note in the guest book. Haha. True statement.

This is what pure giddiness looks like.

Also: Nose-picking in the Metropolitan Frontiers exhibit