I’m honored to have my work included in the exhibition, Stitching the Revolution: Quilts as Agents of Change at the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT. For the exhibition catalog, I’m happy to share an essay I wrote about the role quilt making has played in my work and life.
You can catch the exhibition from May 19 - August 25, 2024 at the Mattatuck Museum.
Loaded Threads: Quilts as Conversation
Natalie Baxter
April 2024
The revolutionary nature of quilts begins with the fabric of which they are comprised. Fabric is part of the human experience from birth. We wrap our babies in fabric; fabric clothes us, protects us, comforts us, warms us as we sleep, and cloaks us in death. When artists choose to center fabric in their work, they are building on these existing relationships and feelings born from lived experience. This is why I find this medium to be so powerful. When I create work using cloth, I am tapping into centuries of feelings inherent in the medium, and these feelings can serve as an entry point to having notoriously difficult conversations.
I first brought fabric into my studio practice with my Warm Gun series. The inspiration came from a 2015 visit to a friend’s house in my home state of Kentucky. At that point, I had lived in New York for a few years and I noticed how utterly strange it felt to see a gun hanging on his wall, while simultaneously realizing how normal it would have been if I hadn’t moved away. This got me thinking about how a place shapes one’s identity and ideology, and how we are all living in our own version of America. These different versions of and visions for America were already becoming codified at the time – the debate over gun control was one of the many divisive issues in the national discourse in the lead up to the presidential election. Each side has only gotten more entrenched in the years since.
Art – particularly artworks using fabric – has the potential to disarm enough to open space for dialogue. My Warm Gun and Bloated Flags series are both colorful, soft-sculpture series that distort recognizable objects of Americana into something comical and palatable. Warm Gun examines the United States’ systemic — and culturally specific –pandemic of gun violence in relation to masculinity. Through the vehicle of colorfully quilted, droopy, caricatures of assault weapons, I bring traditionally “macho” (and, at times, toxically masculine) objects into a traditionally feminine sphere, subverting the gaze and questioning the validity of their potency.
Bloated Flags are a collection of stuffed, swollen representations of the American flag constructed from a mélange of flamboyant fabrics. These sculptural pieces examine the flag as multi-faceted and amorphous – a symbol that is home to conflicting, complicated, and multiple meanings. Beyond the duality of pride and shame, a multiplicity of sentiments is attached to the flag. It is my hope that by using the language of fabric, the familiarity of these objects, and the power of humor and joy, I can create a dialogue that reaches an audience beyond those who hold my political views.
In today’s divided America, it is difficult to have conversations about gun violence, in large part due to extreme political polarization. While curators are compelled by my Warm Gun series because it speaks to America’s current blight of mass shootings, several have expressed concern that my work could be too controversial, particularly in conservative areas. What I have found, however, is that the medium of quilts – the combination of fabric and form – creates an opening for a conversation. While exhibiting work at a gallery in my hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, I overheard a reaction from two older women. They happened upon the gallery from the street, walking in with joyful smiles, commenting on the colorful fabrics and comical forms. After some quiet contemplation, one woman stated that she didn’t believe people should have access to weapons designed for war. Her friend responded that owning a gun made her feel safe while living alone on a farm. Through the shared language of quilting, these two women were able to engage in a conversation about gun control that they likely would not have had otherwise. The quilted gun forms created a space for these two people to explore differing opinions about a highly contested and controversial topic in contemporary politics.
Responses to my work have not all been positive, and not every conversation has been respectful or productive. A negative article about my Warm Gun series was published on Glen Beck’s website, The Blaze. I found the comment section full of responses questioning my gender, my sexuality, and my sanity. Instead of internalizing these ad hominem and negative comments, I turned them into banners resembling those made by early 20th century protestors and suffragists who fought for the right to vote. While this incident did not turn into an opportunity to reach across the political divide, the virulent response proves the power of art to stir emotion, make an argument, and communicate revolutionary ideas.
Quilts can serve as a point of connection. The process of teaching quilting to subsequent generations and handing quilts down through the family or community creates a legacy wherein the quilt serves to connect the past to the present. I am almost always approached by viewers whose stories echo my own: they tell me about quilts that have been in their family for generations, about great aunts who would sew their own clothes, or about quilts they are making for grandchildren.
My maternal grandmother, Geneva Ison, taught me to quilt in the same house where she was born, raised, and lived her life – in a holler alongside Kingdom Come Creek in Kentucky. While in college, I started taking solo trips to visit Granny while working on a documentary film project about the area. I interviewed many female friends and relatives about their attachment to that place, about their desires to stay or to leave, about the hardships brought by mining companies, drugs, and the lack of opportunity. What emerged was a portrait of a dearly-loved place as seen through the lives of the girls and women who inhabited it at various stages of their lives.
Granny shared her experience with me as well. She told me stories about farming the land, shucking beans on the porch, making fried apple pies, and how women would come together to help each other piece and quilt a quilt. Alongside learning how to quilt, these stories were my introduction to a sacred creative ritual passed down by my female ancestors, all of whom used whatever materials they had at hand to pursue their innate need to create. That need would eventually pull me away from documentary filmmaking, as I realized that I could speak more profoundly with and through quilting.
A quilt made by my great grandmother from scrap fabric and feed sacks hangs in my house as homage to the skills she passed down, and the often-invisible work that she and many other women did to pave the way for me and other contemporary artists who work with quilts.
Stitching the Revolution: Quilts as Agents of Change at the Mattatuck Museum delightfully recognizes the power of the shared language that textiles grant us while honoring the quilters who brought us to this moment. Historic quilts from unknown makers are considered alongside the work of contemporary artists. These unknown makers are finally receiving the recognition they never got in their time, freeing them from a long, gendered history of being dismissed as mere craftswomen. This perspective further creates space for quilts to be seen as they are: conveyors of a visual dialogue that still enriches us today.
