This quilt top was created by participants in Professor Larisa Castillo's Winter Humanities Core Seminar. During the unit on the art of Sanford Biggers and the women of Gees Bend, all students in the class tried their hand at quilting to experience the difficulty of the work, to get creative as a group, and thereby to experience the social connectivity--the coded meaning--that emerges from joint quilting projects. The process helped students understand the stakes in defining quilts as art. The themes echo much of the quilting work we analyzed, incorporating quilting codes and images of Harriet Tubman. But the quilt mostly communicates the outcomes of this collaborative, creative work: a new respect for a medium no one tried before (quilting is challenging!), and the power of working communally. The process itself was a portal to new understandings and connections between the participants, ideas we explored in class, and the works of quilting artists of the past and present.
For more on the project, see:
“Quilting as an Art” (Vivian Le)
https://sites.google.com/uci.edu/vivian-le/winter-quarter/quilting-as-an...
“The Quilts of Gees Bend” (Jenny Ngo)
https://sites.google.com/uci.edu/jennyngo-digitalarchive/winter-quarter/...
“Quilt Creation” (Shannon Au)
https://sites.google.com/uci.edu/kyunon/winter/quilt-creation