aMy art emphasizes process over product: when I create art, I create experience.  For me, the physical act of producing art is an intimate engagement in a process of self-discovery.  Making art is my way of considering the unique thoughts, feelings, and experiences that mold my sense of self.  This is why I make self-portraits.  In my previous body of work, I created self-portraits that explored issues of self-image in the context of my own personal struggles with an eating disorder.  Making these self-portraits allowed me to take control over my self-image and express my own representation of myself.  Throughout my life, I let others’ perceptions define me, but by making self-portraits, I counteracted that.  I found the act of authoring representations of myself so empowering that I sought to extend this experience to others.

This quilt is the culmination of ideas, experiences, and artworks that arose from a series of creative workshops that I organized with my peers.  These workshops consisted of discussions about misrepresentations of groups of people, societally constructed standards, and individual sense of self.  I sewed this quilt as a reflection of our creative exchange.  The artworks within the quilt illustrate the individual contributions to the workshop discussions.  The lines of poetry that functioned as the framework for our workshop discussions form the literal framework of this quilt.  They border the quilt and designate this artistic space as a place where representations of individual voices and experiences come together into something larger than themselves.  The literal layers that comprise the quilt are symbolic of the personal layers of thoughts, feelings, and experiences exchanged within the workshops.  The layers of these individual components, unified within the context of this quilt, make this work the collective self-portrait that it is.

This artwork is a collaborative self-portrait.  The images physically printed on fabric and sewn into the quilt are representations of actual artworks made by participants in creative workshops that I developed and facilitated.  My own empowering experience with creating self-portraits served as a catalyst for me to host a series of workshops in which I extended that experience to others.  Each of the three workshops revolved around a poem that explores aspects of female experience within a particular context.  Though these poems focus on female experience, their considerations of themes of identity and experience, and the cultural influences on both, make them accessible to a general audience.  The three poems were: I Sing The Body Electric; Especially When My Power Is Out by Andrea Gibson, Planetarium by Adrienne Rich, and Rising Venus by Kelly Cherry.  The poems served as the core foundation of discussion in the workshops, as well as the inspiration for our own creative works.  The artworks produced reflect layers of the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of each participant.  United together in this quilt, these individual works become a collective self-portrait, reflective of our shared experiences within the context of the workshops and the ways in which we expressed our individual stories, connecting them to something larger than ourselves.

Participants:
Drew Belsinger, Leah Berry, Kristina Borst, Kate Brennan, Lena Castro, Angela Cirillo, Nick Conine, Kate Cumberpatch, Ben Derlan, Suzanne Gogan, Becca Hammersla, JP Herald, Barry Liang, Emily Maginnis, Kaleigh O’Neill, Teresa Padgett, Mavet Rosas, Taylor Schaefer, Stephanie Sraha