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May/June 2006 Featured Story
By Kate Ransohoff
The Planet is in great trouble. Peoples of the Earth are in great trouble with themselves and each other. Now is the time for new actions, drawn from radically new perceptions. Only thus will the peoples of the earth be able to heal themselves and the planet on which our human life depends. No one is exempt from this task. That is as plain as I can make it. “Quilt” is a work that honors all makers of art equally, that sews together a worldview of art without hierarchy of artists, where fine art, craft, traditional art and all other arts are seen to be equally necessary and useful. Turtle Studios, in Watertown, Massachusetts, is a democratically run not-for-profit studio of 40 artists and writers that is based on the beliefs that art comes from spirit, has meaning, and can be made by any person. I am an artist, both visual and written, who has been around and involved with the arts since a child. As a studio artist, it is a natural prerogative to organize ideas in ways that are not necessarily considered logical, although they must fit together in some coherent fashion. It’s not natural for me to organize material, particularly verbal material, in a linear, sequential way. And while I have always enjoyed books – to read and to make, I have never been comfortable in our rectilinear world of letters. With my peculiarities of processing, the happiest time with language has been when studying Biblical Hebrew. It’s backwards to the English-speaker, although reading right to left is in many languages and is read by more than a billion people. The Talmud is a Jewish work of many volumes. It is considered an authoritative record in that tradition consisting of rabbinic discussions on Jewish law, ethics, customs, legends and stories compiled over several centuries. One of the Talmud’s most unique features is the layout of its pages. Each page carries the text being discussed in the center surrounded by the commentaries of different rabbis gathered over a period of many years. The reader engages with this multiplicity of author and text at the same time. “Quilt” is organized in a similar way. You are invited to enjoy, participate and engage with the ideas of “Quilt” in your own style and fashion. “Quilt” has evolved to be more than my work although that is still growing. Called The Quilt Project, it has become an activity of Turtle Studios as an expanding group effort to make its basic premise concretely available to more people. There are three fundamental corollaries to our worldview of art: 1. People from every country make art, and have since humans arrived on the planet. Art is fundamental, and its production has been ceaseless for thousands and thousands of years. People all over the world have made art according to their own needs and standards. There is no end to the creativity of vessels, baskets, tools, textiles, painting and sculpture and video, in making scratches on all manner of available surfaces.
How we see the world determines in large part how we understand it. We need to understand that the map of our planet is a construct, just like other forms of human creativity. There is no up or down to a ball of rock whirling through space. Even the magnetic poles that tell us North from South move constantly – and even switch ends across the eons. Modern mapmakers are revisiting geography and offering new, more precise and factual ways to imagine the realities of the Earth. When I look at the “equal-area projection maps” drawn by Peters, Hobo-Dyer, and others, I know these are not the maps I grew up with and from which my understanding of the shape of the world was formed. Looking at these new maps it seems ludicrous to think that Europe, America, or the two together should have had, or should now have such dominance over other perspectives.. Suddenly it seems clear that we have as much or more to learn as to teach. Geography matters. Where people live and the conditions in which they live determine to a large extent what they see and hear, as well as how they may respond. Geography limits naturally available materials and contributes in large measure to what arts have been made of and for what purposes. Different parts of the world have different historical, religious, political, and physical states as well. The arts deal with all facets of human life, beliefs, cosmologies, and myth. This includes all the ways by which people have learned to understand and make sense of the world and to find their place in the scheme of life. There is no area of human interaction, with each other, animal, plant or spirit that is beyond the scope of art making – including mathematics and science. For most of human history, the arts have been seamlessly integrated into a community or society’s way of life. In relatively recent history, for its own unique reasons, the Western world particularly has split art off from everyday life and made it a thing apart. We now tend to call art “fine art” and consider what is not “fine art” lesser or other, and the pyramid-like structure that we have today came into being. Whatever the specific history of how this situation really developed, lots of people and their arts were not and are not now included equally in the pantheon of Art, including the arts from what are called “developing” nations or indigenous peoples. Remember: art pre-existed money. There are other uses of art, which must not be lost in the push to turn everything into a saleable commodity.
What do we have to lose? What do we have to gain? We are well aware of the changes around us. Without digressing into a rant, our emissions and global warming threaten all life on the planet. Western medicine, for example, depends largely on either natural compounds or synthetics that mimic them. As the rainforests disappear, did the cure for our mother’s cancer vanish with the last member of the tree species that contained the unique compound – or did it disappear with the last moth upon which the tree depended for reproduction? Likewise, our human resources are delicate and endangered. According to the chair of the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, of the 7,000 languages now spoken on the planet, “half of them will probably be lost in the next century.” With those languages will disappear the traditions, economies, intellectual content, and rational capacity used by human beings for survival through the millennia. UNESCO, far beyond supporting mere cultural diversity, is making an urgent priority of the preservation of what it calls “the intangible cultural heritage”:
These problems of ecology, lifestyle, culture and understanding are matters of life and death for us and our children. As artists, we tend to think we have little direct authority to improve them. Although we may not be politicians, bankers, technologists, or other “Masters of the Universe,” as Tom Wolfe teased we have more power and authority than we often remember. We have responsibility as citizens, consumers, parents and survivors – and as artists who cherish the ultimate resource of our creativity. When we make, appreciate, and value the works that have the inherent capability to hold the “worldview of art where all artists, everywhere in the world are considered equal,” we actively contribute to a world that will protect and love all its resources and peoples. Why call this work “Quilt”? The traditional quilt seemed to fit as an accurate description for the work at hand and the name “Quilt” quickly became a happy merger of meaning, potential for growth, materials, and form. Here’s some of why. The quilt is a natural form for adding and shaping in pieces. Quilts have been made in places of comfort and discomfort, wealth and poverty. They have been given for warmth, beauty, to celebrate and remember. Writing, commentary and symbols are natural components of traditional quilts. These many levels of possibility for creating meaning and nuance seemed admirably suited to a work that intends to shift the perception of viewers and participants. So the work is called “Quilt.”
The arts, we know, are not a mere decorative add-on to life, individual and collective, but are essential and primary. They are what makes culture, or have for thousands of years, whether or not their forms fit easily into modern Western definitions. A quilt is a coverlet, a protective covering, in this instance, for all artists everywhere. A quilt is not, nor can it be hierarchical. It is made of many pieces that are sewed, stitched, or somehow put together to make a whole. The whole is made of all the parts. If you take any away you have a “hole” that is no longer “whole.” Of course, that hole can be patched or filled so the whole again appears.
Quilts are two-sided: There can thus be more than one point of view at the same time in the same place. Explicit and implicit, word and image, literate and non-literate can co-exist equally. They can be made by anyone, almost anywhere. There is no need for special education or training. They can be made from whatever is at hand. The used scrap of cloth can be employed in a given pattern or in the most creative, individualistic way. As the quilters of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, have shown, these quilts can also be seen as objects of enormous beauty and power.
A quilt can be signed or unsigned, can be made by or represent an individual or a group. Quilts legitimizethe anonymous, the unknown and the unrecognized. The stories of quilters at their craft, re-affirming and instructing, keeping human memory and language alive, are an integral process in the creation a quilt. Quilts have been used to help preserve traditions and knowledge. A quilt can travel easily to other places, in whole or in segments as well as be gathered together in one place to expand as needed. A good example of this is the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which is billed as the world’s largest on-going community art project. Since 1987 it has grown to more than 44,000 panels, traveled the world, and been shown both indoors and out.
A quilt, like other textiles – including African kente cloth and the quipos of the Incas – can be a place for messages, for coding, or hiding and revealing at the same time, for holding meanings both of the placewhere they are made and places or times far away. The patterns, shapes, and numberings on many quilts can have intentional meanings that are known to communities and cultures, as well as those that are purely private. In Chile, under the military dictatorship of Gen. Pinochet (1973-90), women used scraps of cloth to create “arpilleras” that documented their lives and memorialized loved ones who were “disappeared.” Scholars hotly debate whether slave quilts in the United States were used to “map” the way north to freedom and the location of safe haven on the “Underground Railroad.” The rules of “Quilt”While this project began as one artist’s response to the proposition set out in the opening text, many artists and non-artists alike have contributed their unique perspectives by creating individual panels. I like to work by “rules” that enhance and reflect the meaning of the whole work. Thus “Quilt” is made from recycled brown paper pages, 5x7 or 7x10-inch, which are “sewn” together as hanging panels or folded together as small books. Both sides are used. One, the front, carries words, scraps of cloth, buttons, paper, glued, stitched together. This side holds the artist’s individual commentary and reveals as much or as little as may feel safe or is desired. The other side, the back, is completely visual and expresses the spiritual, historical or other community meaning. “Quilt” is in behalf of the preservation of every culture’s art forms – on its own terms and with its own principles, uses, methods and materials. There are many languages, wisdoms, understandings of the natural world, and beauties, which can be lost forever. “Quilt” holds and believes that all these are necessary to the continued vitality and health of our planet in the same fashion as the plants, animals, and rivers. Because we do not understands something does not mean it has no value. Because at first glance our senses may not be delighted does not mean what we are looking at is not beautiful or purposeful. “Quilt” seeks to expand the map from which we see the world and shift our focus from us to we. Arts can allow and encourage this. “Quilt” is a challenge to the psyche of the Western-trained person to let go and allow the psyche and arts of others to thrive.
Here are a few of the commentaries written by participating artists, which appear on the front side of the quilt: “Weave and stitch, tie and knot memories of forgetfulness. It is time to remember. Care for the earth, care for the plants, animals, peoples of the earth that there may be life. Cut and stitch the sorrows of forgetting. Gather together the joys of remembering.” “Quilt is the language of authenticity. After a long separation, return is a mixed event. Delight, apprehension, relief, and ignorance. What was is gone. What will be is not yet. Learning what is real and how to care of it takes time. Friendship, community, teachers are all necessary. Attend.” “May the spirit of the sacred be present, and perceived.” “Quilt loves numbers. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. “Death of a language, all its knowledge, customs untold. “Unintended consequences. Cultures, languages, customs, rituals, songs, poems, dances, weavings, remedies, love, genealogies, prayers, codes, beliefs. Unintended consequences. Naming the uncounted. “Yes. This is our planet earth. Yes. This is where we live. We are able to destroy this our planet and make of it dust. Not dust from the earth from which we have come but dust of the earth to the earth. Yes. We make this choice by choosing or not choosing.” Perhaps you are ready to learn more about or to join The Quilt Project. Consider participating in this world endeavor of human creativity. Help begin the healing.
Kate Ransohoff is founder and coordinator of The Quilt Project. She may be reached at Turtle Studios at 617-923-6233, by e-mail at krartist @ rcn.com, or by mail at 60 Tufts Street, Somerville, MA 02145. ©2006 Fellowship of Reconciliation |
To create a worldview of art that honors all arts equally, where there is no dominance of one perspective, medium or modality over another, no absorption of one into another, where the traditional and modern, signed and unsigned, ceremonial, secular, religious, men and women are considered of equal merit is a daunting task. It is a task that necessitates a considered viewing at how the world really looks. For many of us in the United States, this is a big stretch. 
