Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women

A thick, rugged woven quilt hangs on the wall, about three feet across and four feet long. Interlacing strips of earth-toned linen weave together to create a field of diamond shapes. Although linen, these strips appear bulky and scratchy, conveying the thick warmth of wool. The individual strips are multicolored but subdued. Their natural hues range from shades of tan and brown like unfinished stone, wood, or soil, to the rust-toned reds of a desert mountain. These colors do not create a recognizable pattern, instead coming together to create an abstract woven design.

The quilt appears to fold inward along its left and right edges, creating rounded folds of light tan fabric with a white textured coating, almost as if someone has run a paintbrush down each side. The textile sinches slightly at the middle, where a light brown, leather-colored piece of string is pulled taut, perhaps as a support mechanism for the pattern. At the bottom, the ends of the woven fabric hang free and raw. They are rough and uneven, adding to the weathered, well-loved, handmade feel of the quilt.

A nearly seven-foot-long sculpture made of rope, cordage, and string hangs, suspended from the ceiling. At its largest width, it is twenty inches across, but its shape is irregular and three-dimensional. The object’s texture appears simultaneously rough and sensuously smooth, creating movement and dynamism that lends the sculpture an almost lifelike, organic feel. Its color palette of muted greens, blues, purples, and pinks is natural and earthy, like moss or seaweed, with a glossy sheen that conveys fluidity. The sculpture is made up of thick, sturdy ropes — like those one might use to tie a boat to a dock — that weave and wrap together with thinner threads. It is impossible to tell where one rope begins and another ends. At its top, the sculpture is knotted, narrow, and tight. It gradually widens and narrows again, ending in a taper of tendrils that reach toward the ground like tentacles. Some cling closely to the object’s mass, while others dangle, twisted and curled.

This delicate sculpture hangs from the ceiling at almost seven feet long, with a narrow diameter of only nine inches. Created from sheer white netting, the oblong sculpture is almost transparent. Wispy tendrils of monofilament dangle in coiling curls from the sculpture’s base and drape over its top, lending it a jellyfish-like ethereality. Inside, visible through the netting, suspends a clear, horizontal ring that seems to hold the object’s shape. Layers of sheer netting appear to fuse together in some areas and fall apart in others, adding dimension to the work and creating undulating patterns like helixes or S curves. These gentle waves contribute to the airy fluidity and otherworldliness of the sculpture.

A vibrant pictorial quilt, roughly the size of a king-size bed, hangs vertically. The viewer’s attention is drawn first to the two-dimensional scene at the center of the quilt, where twelve figures surround a long rectangular dinner table. The scene has been painted onto the quilt. The figures all have medium-brown skin, and each sits in a patterned chair, except for an elaborately dressed woman who stands in the scene’s foreground. Delicate white quilting stitches form a floral wallpaper over a rich, royal blue background.

The woman in the foreground wears a multicolored, multitextured item of clothing. Her outstretched arms hold the fabric out wide like a cape, giving it shape. In her right hand, she holds a painted tribal mask, perhaps African in origin. It features a rectangular nose, a square mouth, and long locks of straw-colored hair that fall from its crown. The woman’s cheeks are flushed a bright pinkish red like strawberries. Her eyes are turned upward, and her neutral expression conveys focus. She wears a silver headdress with dangling tassels that hang over her shoulder-length black hair.

To her left, a girl with curly dark-brown hair sits in a bright yellow-and-green spotted chair. She watches the woman with a neutral expression that verges on apprehension. The girl wears white shoes with low heels and a plain white long-sleeved dress that stops at her shins.

Each figure sitting at the table has a yellow-rimmed plate of food and a drink. The table is dressed with a bountiful meal, along with a few brown bottles. The pearly white tablecloth is decorated with small blue dots creating long lines and S shapes over the fabric. Shadows and highlights on the figures’ skin are depicted with darker shades of brown and lighter shades of pink. There are three women and seven men, all dressed in formal attire including suits with ties, bowties, and gowns of varying colors including bright red and light blue silver. All eyes point to the woman in the colorful outfit with various expressions. Some people look amused, others look uncomfortable and confused. Some look apathetic. Upon close inspection of each figure, names appear painted onto each chair in varying spots. Clockwise, from top left, the names include W. E. B. Du Bois, Dr. Percel Trombone Prince, Richard Wright, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Alaine Locke, Langston Hughes, Florence Mills, Aaron Douglass, and Meta Warrick Fuller.

The rectangular scene in the center is surrounded by a multicolored border of quilted half-squares that suggest the elegant forms and glossy touch of origami paper. Triangles of various hues and patterns have been stitched together to form the quilt blocks. Two lines of peach-colored fabric run down the left and right sides of the quilt, bordering the center of the scene and appearing like unfurled rolls of parchment paper. These lines contain text written in fabric marker, which read as follows:

1. Cee Cee was meticulous about the house. Everything had a place. Cee Cee collected boxes and empty containers to put things in. Her mother sent her handwoven and hand-dyed fabrics from Africa which inspired her to sew an endless array of bags which she now used as containers for everything. Her method of working was always the same.
2. First she selected colors and patterns of the brightly dyed fabrics and cut them into squares. And then she sewed the squares together in a random order to form long strips. And then she sewed the strips together to form large lengths of fabric out of which she made the bags, covers, drapes, costumes, et cetera.
3. Celia was very disturbed by Cee Cee’s odd looking patterns. She learned in drawing to match colors tastefully and to select one pattern and repeat in some way to create a balanced harmonious design. Cee Cee had not gone further than the eighth grade in school when she married the dentist.
4. Her education in the subtleties of refined coloration and design was cut short or was never learned. At any rate, Cee Cee, shall we say, turned a ​“deaf ear” to any talk that her bags were ​“tacky,” as they said in those days, and that she was a ​“tasteless low class hussy to clutter up the dentist’s fine house with all that ​‘Mammy-made’ stuff.”
5. From the time Celia was a little girl, she took on the responsibility to keep a conversation going at the dinner table. Since Cee Cee was deaf and never spoke in public, it would put the guests at ease to hear another voice other than the dentist’s.
6. Celia became quite eloquent on the important topics of the day. She often vied with Cee Cee’s scrumptuously prepared dinners by talking too much and interrupting the guests’ praise of Cee Cee’s food. 
7. Cee Cee’s roast duck and fricasseed chicken, macaroni and cheese, candied sweets, peach cobbler and at Christmas time, Cee Cee’s fruit cake, drenched in 200 proof Jamaican rum you could set fire to, were unsurpassed in southern cooking.
8. Hardly a week went by that the dentist did not have a dinner party of 20 or more people in the large dining room. Almost every night there were two or three drop-in dinner guests. And on Sunday, after church, there was the family — Cee Cee’s cousins and her aunts and uncles and the dentist’s brothers and their wives and children.
9. So Cee Cee prepared a large dinner almost every night. She loved to cook — but what she loved even more was to sew and dance. After dinner, Cee Cee put on a show of sorts that topped off the evening and put the conversation of such frequent visitors as Alaine Locke, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes and Aaron Douglass at a standstill.
10. Dressed in her oddly pieced and quilted costumes, masks and headdresses of her making, she moved among the illustrious guests to music only she could hear. Strange as it seemed, they looked forward to Cee Cee’s unusual presentations and thought of her as an eccentric undiscovered original.
11. The times pressed the artists of the Harlem Renaissance into a regiment of social and political propaganda for the elevation of Race People. But what was Cee Cee doing? Was this art? No one dared ask that question knowing full well that the interrogator would only look like a fool and the one who answered would be one.
12. And furthermore, no one wanted to offend the dentist or Cee Cee. Celia sat through these performances like an old man at a church tea. She hated Cee Cee’s unusual display and made it a point to let the guests and Cee Cee know it. ​“My mother is a family disgrace.
13. The only hope I have of not becoming the laughing stock of everybody is to get out of here and follow in my father’s footsteps and become a doctor. I cannot relate to her. As far as I am concerned, she is crazy like her quilts.” The dentist accepted Cee Cee’s shows as a peculiarity associated with her deafness.
14. “Cee Cee is just trying out something to express herself,” he’d say. ​“She will be going for sewing lessons as soon as Celia is older and off to college and she can get out of the house.” Celia got older and went off to college and came home a doctor and Cee Cee was still right there making bags and dancing to music only she could hear.

Faith Ringgold © 1988 NYC

A stark, black-and-white pictorial quilt, about the size of a king-size bed, hangs horizontally. A thick black band borders the interior frame, which features an abstract scene of images on a white background, unified by a style reminiscent of African wood carvings. The quilt’s monochromatic palette relies on light and shadow to create the bold, dynamic shapes that make up these inklike appliquéd images.

In the bottom left-hand corner, three uniformly sized human profiles are positioned in a row. They face right and share a peaceful expression, eyes closed and lips pursed, as if blowing out a candle. On the quilt’s lower right corner, another set of three profiles mirrors the first. The face at the far right is the largest of the three, which become smaller as they near the center of the quilt. Their expressions are similar, but their ink-black eyes are open. Between the two sets of faces, three human figures with oval heads are shown from the waste up, standing shoulder to shoulder and wearing kente-like wraps that feature geometric patterns. Just above the faces and figures, a rough line that could represent a rock ledge or a horizon cuts across the quilt. Hovering just above this line are six disembodied faces, suspended and spaced evenly across the quilt’s canvas. Curling white lines over each black oval indicate the facial features. In the top left corner floats a black sun, its rays radiating across the quilt in irregular concentric circles, suggesting the warmth of sunlight. The quilt’s stitching is subtle and appears to trace the shapes of the scene and figures, adding texture and depth throughout. If one were to touch the stitching with a finger, they could follow the lines to imagine the scene. The border of the entire quilt is black and stitched with diamond shapes. At the bottom right corner of the quilt on the white background in black thread, stitched handwriting reads: ​“The Family #5 by Carolyn Mazloomi 1999.”

Fibrous cords drape over a twenty-inch-wide rod to create the suggestion of a waterfall, which cascades fifteen feet down and pools on the floor. The other side hangs three quarters of the way down. Stone-gray threads bunch together to create the cords or skeins, which vary in thickness and texture. They seem coarse, almost like horsehair. In some spots the cords are slick and taut, and in others they are loose and billowing. Sections of brightly colored and tightly wound thread bind together each cord at irregular intervals. These vary in length and range in color, from firetruck and wine red to bright lemon yellow, burnt orange, loud magenta, pearl white, bright gold, and flowery pink. The ends of the cords have been left unbound; they spread out in fanlike sprays of thread.