Artwork Details
- Title
- Tender Gardens
- Artist
- Date
- 2014
- Location
- Dimensions
- 72 1⁄2 × 72 1⁄8 in. (184.2 × 183.2 cm)
- Credit Line
- Gift of Michael Humphreys
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- cotton fabric and batt
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Architecture Exterior
- Figure female — full length
- Landscape — garden
- Occupation — domestic — gardening
- Object Number
- 2023.41
Artwork Description
Marion Coleman
born 1946, Wichita Falls, TX
died 2019, Oakland, CA
Tender Gardens
2014
cotton fabric and cotton batting
Marion Coleman began quilting in the 1980s, drawing inspiration from her relatives who quilted in the narrative tradition. Here, she tells the story of a garden in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco.
In 2010, the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation transformed a vacant lot to a flourishing urban farm. Tended exclusively by volunteers, the Tenderloin People’s Garden offers free produce, herbs, and plants native to the Tenderloin, a neighborhood with no full-service grocery store.
Coleman’s fiber collage comes together with vignettes of people working and photo transfers of the garden against the backdrop of the Civic Center of San Francisco. It celebrates people returning to the soil for sustenance, nourishment, and connection.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Michael Humphreys, 2023.41
We Gather at the Edge: Contemporary Quilts of Black Women Artists, 2025