Paper Quilts & Word Works

My work has evolved into a series of hand-sewn paper quilts, incorporating passport pages, old letters and other samples of handwriting. The quilts are self-portraits. I use this traditional American form as a metaphor for many experiences pulled into a single, multi-faceted identity. In its connotations of quilting bees and domesticity, it also expresses a wish to build my own community and find a home. As a child, I moved from country to country every two years. The quilt project is a personal celebration of the past few years in which I managed to stay put, and thus gather the stable group of friends and family I sorely missed in my past.

As before, I am exploring writing as something other than the obvious means of communication. I want to abstract the handwritten line on paper the way painters have abstracted the drawn line and modern poets have begun to abstract language. In asking people around me to write for my quilts, I am not so interested in what they say as I am in capturing a bit of their essence and weaving it into this self-representational quilt—the same way fans ask celebrities for autographs or students ask each other to sign their yearbooks. Graphology argues that one's personality is apparent in their handwriting. When I cut up people’s letters and blur them with water, the viewer cannot read the words in the original context, but the individuality of the writers’ marks remains. That individual essence is what I sew into my self-portraits. After all, our identities are shaped by those around us.