Quilts

I first brought sewing into my studio practice with a series of soft sculpture work nearly a decade ago, wrongfully assuming it was a temporary dip into working with fabric rather than a full plunge. 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 desire 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, and making fried apple pies, as well as how women would come together to help each other piece and sew a quilt. Alongside learning how to quilt, these stories were my introduction to a sacred creative ritual passed down by my female ancestors, all using 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 through the language of quilting.

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 associations born from lived experience. It’s why I am drawn to the powerful nature of working with fabric, to create dialogues that have a wider significance—and therefore might reach a wider audience, specifically on topics that have become points of division in our country.

My work has been dancing around quiltmaking for years, hinting at its long, gendered history of invisible labor and dismissal as mere craft. The work in this portfolio marks my departure from sculptural work toward something I was unconsciously avoiding—making actual quilts. The quilts here incorporate fabric found in secondhand stores, a practice I started while on a residency in Sweden a few years ago. Objects that hold a past life in the domestic sphere are placed in quilted frames, demanding respect. Similarly, framed quilt squares from patterns believed to have guided enslaved people north to freedom during the Civil War are rendered in found domestic fabrics. These coded patterns reference the resourceful workarounds women have been performing for generations and continue to do in a country with deteriorating reproductive healthcare.

Now I find myself only wanting to make quilts—quilts from actual patterns that I find in quilting books, just as Granny once did and just as many people around the world do every day. A pursuit I once viewed as a way to keep my hands busy, while working through ideas for what I saw as my more conceptual work, has become central to my practice. I’m not sure if quiltmaking is a new direction or a respite, but as an artist I believe in trusting the process and following the excitement wherever it leads.

—Natalie Baxter

From top to bottom: Blue Apron Quilt: found apron, curtains, bed sheets, cotton batting, 32” x 38”, 2022, NB0310. Apple Tea Towel Quilt: found tea towels, fabric, cotton batting, 41” x 28”, 2022, NB0313. Blue Pillowcase Quilt: found pillowcase, curtains, bed sheets, cotton batting, 24” x 32”, 2022, NB0311. Nuclear Housecoat: found quilt top, pillowcases, housecoat, fabric, cotton batting, 80” x 60”, 2022, NB0317. Nuclear Apron Quilt: found apron, pillowcase, sheets, curtains, cotton batting, 37” x 37.5”, 2022, NB0318. Champagne Problems: fabric, cotton batting, polyester fill, found apron, found bathing suit, fringe, thread, 58” x 31”, 2022, NB0331. Flower Bear Claw Quilt: bed sheets, cotton batting, thread, 22” x 22” x 2.5”, 2023, framed, NB0361. Flower North Star Quilt: bed sheets, cotton batting, thread, 16.25” x 16.25” x 2.5”, 2023, framed, NB0365. Flower Basket Quilt: bed sheets, cotton batting, thread, 22.5” x 22.5” x 2.5”, 2023, framed, NB0362. Roadrunner Garfield Pink Panther Bear Claw Quilt: found bed sheets, cotton batting, thread, 68” x 91”, 2023, NB0370. Red White Blue Square Quilt: bed sheets, curtains, cotton batting, thread, 63” x 63”, 2024, NB0372. Ribbon Star Flower Quilt: found bed sheets, fabric, 66” x 66”, 2024, NB0371.