This set of works began from a quilt from my own family, a whole-cloth tied quilt made by my Great Grandmother, Lucille Szplia. For many women, especially homemakers, working-class women, immigrant women, and women whose public identities were often recorded only in relation to husbands or fathers, the objects they made are the clearest surviving evidence of their skill, labor, taste, care, and presence in the world. As I began to look through the quilt index I was relying on the history recorded by these projects, and in turn, what was known or remembered by their family members. History is like a snowball, and only through the rolling of the snowball on the ground would it ever turn into a snowman, it needs the work of others to give the snowball something to build on in order to become large enough to continue the story of these people into the future. Delima and Albertine were chosen by me because of the accessibility to the photos and stories of their lives, without the work of the Rhode Island Quilt Project and the generosity of Dr. Linda Welters, these pieces would not have been possible. 

I am have moved these quilt patterns, photos, and written evidence between textile, paper, digital archives, and moved them into/onto clay. I have taken a pattern from these soft, vulnerable, or time-worn materials and translate it into a medium associated with permanence, preservation, and record-keeping. I think often about how impressions of cord, basketry, and textile structures in ancient ceramics have preserved evidence of perishable craft traditions. Clay can hold memory. In this project, it becomes a way to preserve and extend the historical presence of these women’s textile labor.