Quilt Exhibit at Berkeley Museum Chronicles Black Lives in California
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. In the years surrounding World War II, many Black families migrated from the western parts of the South, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and made their way to Northern California to work in the industries that ring the Bay. They brought their art and folkways with them, infusing the Bay Area with African-American traditions.

There's no better example of this cultural innovation and continuity than the quilts on display in a new exhibit at the Berkeley Art Museum titled Routing West. These quilts are more than fabric, they are the material manifestation of history, resilience, and family. We'll talk all about the exhibit right after this news.

Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Let me tell you, this new exhibit at the Berkeley Art Museum, Rooted West, 20th Century African American Quilts in California, is a real treat for historians, for quilters, for lovers of craft and art. Even as someone who is not handy with the needle and thread, the pure aesthetic creativity on display in the show is remarkable.

Some of the quilts are regular, others irregular. Some have muted colors, others wild riots from across the spectrum. The variations are beautiful and varied, yet they all do seem to pulse with a certain energy as part of this rich tradition. No matter what, hands worked hard over these pieces, and they were meant to last.

The new quilt show draws on the remarkable collection assembled by Eli Leon, a white gay Jewish artist and psychologist born in the Depression-era Bronx who moved to Oakland, met quilt makers, and became obsessed with collecting the quilts created by African-American artists.

It's a lot to discuss. We're joined this morning by Ora Clay, a member of the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland. Welcome, Ora. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. We're also joined by Elaine Yao, Associate Curator and Academic Liaison at the Berkeley Art Museum. She's the creator of Rooted West, a new exhibit of African American quilts. Thanks for joining us. Thank you.

Elaine, this is part of your work and your life's work to work with quilts. Why quilts? Like what can a quilt do? That's a great question. Quilts, I think for artists, for quilt makers, offer a space for creativity that sort of just lives with you in your everyday lives. You can pick it up. You can put it down.

It can fill the breaks in your life. It allows you to tell stories. And I think for the people who receive quilts and live with quilts, yeah, very practically, they provide warmth. They are sort of this object of comfort. And it can travel with you. And I think because it can travel with you, it sort of accumulates warmth.

the kinds of memories that you might hold in your own mind, but it's sort of externalized. And I kind of love that about it. Ora, for you, tell us about what a quilt actually is, like the kind of different parts physically of a quilt.

When we talk about a quilt, it's really three layers. There is the top layer, and that's where you do your design or your piecing. And that's the layer that most people see. But then there is the middle layer, which is sort of like where you get your warmth. It's like the cotton part. It's the batting. It's the soft part of the quilt. And then you have the back.

which is the back of the quilt. And I just want to say, you don't usually see the back, but in this exhibition that's at the Berkeley Art Museum,

Some of the quilts are hung so that we can see the backs, and we often want to see that back. But anyway, so those three layers are then quilted, and we use these terms interchangeably, but the quilting is actually holding these three layers together. When we did the top layer, that was the piecing or the designing of the composing, but the quilting part is holding these three layers together.

And could any fabric be used for the piecing for the front? And what normally would get stuffed in the middle, the warm part?

Any fabric can be used for the quilting, I mean for the piecing on top, taking into account that different fabrics act differently. And in the exhibit, there are quilts with velvet, but for a quilter, when you're piecing,

you do a lot of ironing. And if you iron velvet, you get a different look to it. What does it do? Sometimes it mats or it's not to be used with a hot iron. That's why in quilting, sometimes we don't use a lot of velvet. But if

If you want that effect, then yes, you can use velvet or any other kind of embellishment. Again, take into account what it will do if you put an iron to it. So yes, you can. Elaine, this exhibit pulls from the permanent collection of quilts which are now at the museum. We have this passionate collector we're going to talk about a little bit later.

Talk to me about the variety of quilts and why you wanted to pull them together around this theme of rootedness and rooting, like R-O-U-T-I-N-G, but also R-O-O-T-I-N-G. Yeah, so the exhibition really is intended to foreground a real diversity of styles and construction techniques. Visitors to the show can see...

Quilts made out of worn and used work clothes in the quilting community, those are usually called britches quilts. You'll see pattern-based quilts that are really precision quilts.

All the points, all the corners are really perfectly matched up. The quilting that Ora was describing is really exquisite. You'll also see quilts that are much looser, that are more improvisationally put together from almost disparate fabrics that create these unexpected juxtapositions.

And novel materials. So Ora mentioned velvets, but there are satins. There's ripstop nylon, denim, of course, cotton. So really an array. And so your other question was about why rootedness? Yeah. Yeah. You know, sifting through this massive collection, I really didn't know...

what the organizing concept would be, but I knew I wanted it to be more than just a greatest hits. Um, we have this over 3000 African-American made quilts. Um, I really wanted audiences to understand, and I wanted to understand, um, what kind of history binds them together. Um, so this notion of rootedness in terms of like home place of knowing where one's, um,

origins are is so much a part of African American quilt history in terms of the ways that quilts begin in the home. And then as the story of the Great Migration implies, people are leaving home, going to new places, wanting to establish themselves, seeking fortunes and seeking mobility.

And they're carrying these quilts with them. So I just simply wanted to know, what was it about quilts that made them so valuable and cherished over time? Oh, I mean, you were part of this migration too, right? And came as a teenager.

Right. As Elaine was talking, I was thinking, she's telling my story already. I was born in Alabama. Tiny little town, right? I was looking it up. Well, it's 20 miles from Tuskegee, if you know where Tuskegee is, and 50 miles from Montgomery. So...

Those are our points, you know, because I was born in Union Springs, Alabama, so you wouldn't know Union Springs. But anyway, as Elaine was saying, I came to California when I was 16, and I got on a train all by myself to come to California because California had free college.

And I think that's what people did. They moved to find a better place. And for me, it was to find a way to be able to go to college. So I came to California and went to free junior college. And

With me, I brought, or my mother gave me a quilt to bring, and that was representative of home for me. And my quilt at the museum and the exhibition is about this journey because when I got on that train at 16, it was by myself.

I had never left Alabama before this, and I'm coming across the country to California. I had no idea what I had in store for me. But in my quilt at the museum, I wanted to remember and honor

the Pullman Porters because I'm sitting on this train and the Pullman Porters were hired for the rich people who rode the trains. But as they walked through the train, there were people that looked like me. And so they would check on me and say, how are you doing? Do you need anything?

So I felt that I was someone was looking after me. I wasn't all by myself. So my quilt includes the Pullman Porters and also in California and in Oakland the Pullman Porters were big union organizer right as a union and understand Ronald Ellum's father was part of that that movement and

So, you know, as I said, I brought a quilt with me that stayed with me all of these years. I used it over and over again. And after a while, it could no longer be used on the bed because, you know, they had some worn spots and was sort of falling apart.

So I used the corner of that quilt as the foundation for my quilt in the museum and used applique to have the Pullman Porters images, images of my mother.

Also, on that trip and traveling, we always took a shoebox of food because we didn't know where we would be able to eat at a restaurant. So I have a shoebox on my quilt. Do you remember what was in your lunch? Yes. We always had fried chicken and pound cake because those were things that could last a couple of days. It lasts a little bit.

And Saturday when I was at the museum, there were ladies, oh, yes, I remember carrying that shoebox full of foods. So that was a memory for, you know, people looking at the quilt and a memory for people who migrated or traveled during that time. So, yes, that is my story. What a story. What a story. What a bold person at that, you know.

Was there anything special about the batting or the backing that you want to mention? Well, in the quilt that my mother made, one question quilters always get is, how long does it take to make a quilt? And that question may be coming up. How long does it take to make a quilt? But I always reference my mother, and I wrote an article in Quilt Folk Magazine about this, about how long does it take? Well, for the batting in my mother's quilts, she didn't go and buy batting like I can do.

She had to plant the cotton, grow the cotton, harvest the cotton. My father took the cotton to the gin to remove the seeds from the cotton, brought it home, and she had to stretch the cotton for the batting. So in the quilt that I have in the museum, in the exhibition...

Part of it is frayed, so you can see some of that kind that was used in the quilt. Wow. And that's how long it took her to make a quilt, if you count out that time. Seasons worth, yeah. We're talking about the new exhibit, Rooted Wilderness.

West 20th century African American quilt in California it is at the Berkeley Art Museum right now we're joined by Ora Clay a member of the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland she's got a quilt in the exhibit we're also joined by the curator of the exhibit Elaine Yao and of course we want to hear from you is there a quilt in your family are you a quilter maybe you've seen the exhibit 866-733-6786 forum at kqed.org find us on social media too I'm Alexis Madrigal stay tuned

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Welcome back to Forum. Alexis Madrigal here. We're talking about the new exhibit in the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. It's called Rooted West, 20th Century African American Quilt in California. Joined by Ora Clay, a member of the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland. Also joined by Elaine Yao, associate curator and academic liaison at the museum and the curator of the exhibit.

We'd love to hear from you. I mean, is there a quilt in your family that holds a cherished sense of place? What makes that quilt special? What do you know about it? What's its story? Maybe you're a quilter. How did you come upon the craft? Give us a call. The number is 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. The email is forum at kqed.org. A

Elaine, one of the things I love about this exhibit is as you come in, there's these blue and white maps on the wall. And it kind of has little points on the map that represent the birthplaces and kind of origins of people.

of these quilts. And you can see this incredible connection between the kind of Western part of the South and the Bay Area and really all of Northern California, you know, stretching over to Fresno. And even if you knew nothing else about what happened during the second great migration, you could just look at that and you'd figure out something about, you know, which communities in the South ended up here in Northern California. Walk us through the kind of rest of the exhibit as you kind of are. What was the idea behind this?

quilts in particular places as you walk through? Yeah, the exhibition is more or less organized to take visitors through this trajectory of migration. So the first section, we begin in the south with quilts that were all

made in the southern states and primarily East Texas, Northern Louisiana, Southern Arkansas, Oklahoma. So that region that really represents the main demographic flow of Black migration to this area. We start there. Some of the earliest quilts in the exhibition are in this section. And then the next four sections or so

take you through and we end up in California in the 1970s and onward. And then we end with contemporary quilt makers, many of them from the guild that Aura belongs to. But in between these sections, I didn't want the show to proceed and kind of plot along in a linear fashion. But so these, the middle sections are really meant to open a space for people to think about the

what cultural and social practices sustain this tradition. So there's a section entitled "Carried and Kept" that really asks what makes a quilt special and cherished, and that's where memory and memory work enters into the picture.

Another section entitled Tending Generations Spotlights, Quilts Made by Multiple Generations Within Families. And so that's looking at the ways that black women in particular are teaching and passing along the skills and the principles and the wisdom entwined with quilt making. And another section, actually the biggest section of the show, is

is entitled Rooted West, but that's where sort of this explosion of color and aesthetic experimentation takes place. And that really explores how women quilt makers are realizing their own aesthetic visions and exploring the aesthetic and beauty of quilt making.

Yeah, I mean, I have to say, Ora, I always thought of quilts as being something that came, I mean, before I encountered the great art of a lot of these quilts, I had thought of it as something that largely was done from pattern. You know, that people would, there were certain standard styles, there were certain standard patterns, and of course there was a lot of artistry and craft work involved, but that it was largely something that was done

I don't know, like a little more programmed or something, you know? Where do you think like a lot of this sort of experimentation or where did your own sense of experimentation kind of come from?

I think you're right in that a lot of us think of quilts as a pattern. But I think what now we've moved to what we call art quilts so that we're not following a pattern, but we're telling a story or story quilts. And I, when I first started quilting or first learned to quilt, I started with a pattern because it's sort of like knowing the foundation of

I started with a log cabin pattern and a lot of people start with that because it's easy but it's very once you get it done it's very I mean you think wow but it's easy to put together so I started with that pattern but then

Once I made my log cabin quilt and sewed all of the blocks together, I thought, "This needs something more." So that's when I developed, in my journey, a story quilt. So I started with a log cabin pattern that had courthouse steps, variation of that pattern. It's the way you turn the pattern, you know, and it looked like courthouse steps.

Well, I live in a house with two lawyers, so I thought it can have more. So I turned that quilt or that pattern into Brown v. Board of Education for the courthouse steps. So I listed all of the plaintiffs that were in that case. I listed the lawyers who argued the case at the Supreme Court.

and the cases that led up to Brown versus Board of Education because it wasn't just one case. And I listed and I applicate a black and white doll on the quote because that referenced the study that was done where the black children was choosing a white doll and the judge was swayed to understand that, you know, separate was not equal. So anyway, so I started with a pattern, but it turned into an art quilt.

And I have to say that quote is now being shown at the Smithsonian and in Washington, D.C. as part of an exhibition by women of color quilters. So, you know, to answer your question, yes, we definitely use patterns and it's definitely a foundation, but it can develop into a story quote. Yeah.

we've got, well, let's do this comment first. Actually, listener writes in to say, please speak about the Bay area quilter named Marion Coleman. Her,

Her history is an important piece of the history of quilting. Also, there's an exhibition of storytelling quilts known as Forced to Flee, which includes quilts that depict historical situations from which people fled violence or poverty. This collection has been around for years, was shown in 2022 at the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek. As more communities in the world are forced from their homes, the collection grows. Or it sounded like you knew Mary. Well, how much time do I have? So...

After I retired of 30 years of working as a school librarian, my daughter took me to a class and it was being taught by Marion Coleman. It was at Moab. And that was my first introduction. The Museum of the African Diaspora. Yes. And that was my first, first introduction to making a quilt. What she was teaching was making quilts.

quilted postcards, four inches by six inches. And if you never made a quilt, I can do four inches by six inches. I can cover that. So in Marion's class, I learned to make a postcard. And from there, I went to 12 inches by 12 inches. And from there, Marion was a person who made everybody feel like they could do anything. I mean,

And I thought I was the only one that felt that way or that she treated that way. And I found out everybody she met, she treated that way. Just skipping, but she received a national endowment for the Arts Award. But going back, so with Marion, she was president of the African-American Quilting Guild of Oakland.

And she curated a show about quilts across Oakland. And she asked the guild members to do story quilts about Oakland. Well, people had been doing pattern quilts. And they said, I can't do a story quilt. And Marianne said, yes, you can. So people said, I did it. You know, wow, I did it.

So those quilts were shown all over Oakland at City Hall, the administration, the county administration building, George Gordon's gallery. And the New York Times came and interviewed us and quilts showed up on the front page of the art section of the New York Times page.

So, that was a big feather in the gills cap. And Marion Coleman was the one who spearheaded all of that. So, she- I also heard you're over on a forum as well, at least some folks. That's what I heard. And one of her quotes is also in the exhibition too. So, yes. That's nice.

I want to go to the phones. We've got some folks who want to talk about quilts that are special to them, do that memory work that Elaine was talking about. If you've got some of this, give us a call. I love hearing these stories. 866-733-6786. This is a quilt in your family that maybe holds a cherished sense of place or that holds some of your family history. 866-733-6786. Go to Karen in Oakland. Welcome.

Hi, thank you for having me. I have a quilt that my grandmother made in the late 1930s, and it's about the size, like it could fit a king-size bed, and it's all hand-stitched, where the fabric's, I guess, from the family, and it's unfinished. She did all

all of the squares, and my mom did the middle part, you know, to back it, but she passed, so I have the quilt folded over a chair that belonged to my grandmother. They migrated from Springfield, Illinois,

to Oakland in the 1940s. So it just means a lot to me. I'm an artist. I make dolls. And I was also honored to meet Miriam Coleman at one of the exhibits of her quilts. So this is really a wonderful program. And thank you for letting me share. Oh, hey, thank you, Karen. Thank you for sharing your story with us.

You know, that reminds me, Elaine, of the room, just like the positioning, the way that quilts were actually used. You have a guest bedroom of one of the artists who, with like quilt in it, sort of the way they would have been displayed. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, this is a really special installation made by Isiodore Whitehead, who lived in Oakland. She was from Magnolia, Arkansas. But in the guest bedroom in her home, she...

She installed a double wedding ring pattern, but in so many different kind of elements. There, of course, is the quilt that is laid on the bed. But not only that, she made four sets of drapes for the windows.

Again, all in the double wedding ring pattern, which for the listeners out there who know it, it's one of the most challenging, technically challenging patterns to execute. There are floor mats also made in this pattern. And sort of to top it off, the armchair has a double wedding ring cushion that she's made for it. So we mentioned Eli Leon. He was the collector there.

He purchased the entirety of the room from her, including the furniture, the vanity, the mirror, the dresser, the night table, the perfume bottles on her vanity, the chandelier. And so it was sort of this amazing opportunity to recreate this installation. We have the original photograph of how it looked in her home on the night table. And I think for me, it was just really...

this beautiful realization of how an artist's vision just, she can live with it. She had it the way she wanted it. And another special element is that on the drapes, she has embroidered the names of all of the individuals who donated her fabric in the creation of this work. At the time that she was creating these, she was a bus driver for the Oakland School District. And while she's waiting for school to let out,

she's sitting in the driver's seat sewing. Wow. I mean, Ora, was there anything special for you about moving into that space where you could see these quilts arranged in this particular way?

You mean at the museum? At the museum, yeah. Yes, because, you know, the Oakland Quilting Guild has a section. So when you walk in, you see our quilts. So that's very special. As I said, Marion Coleman has a quilt. There's another quilter who has a self-portrait. There's another quilter who has...

A silhouette of Kamala Harris. So hopefully Kamala can come to see the exhibit, walk in and see her inspiration. So yes, it's very special. My daughter has a quilt in the exhibition. My quilt is right next to her. So we get to take pictures side by side with our quilts.

And also, back in the past, I forgot to mention that Marion Coleman was my mentor. So now I am the mentor for my daughter. So we are sort of keeping that traditional tradition going. Let's bring in Debra in Oakland. Welcome, Debra.

Oh, thank you. I'm so glad to have this program. My mother came to California in 1942, and she couldn't bring a quilt, but she brought two nieces with her. But my grandmother joined her, and she brought quilts for all of us, for all of our beds. So as growing up,

we had quilts that had our clothes in it. I had a quilt that had my prom dress in it. It had my jeans in it. And we just sort of loved it because I would look at the quilt and I'd see my past life. But I just want to say that it was wonderful having those quilts. And my mother would give quilts

The people who she really loved, one of my classmates from medical school came to visit her while I wasn't there. And she gave her a quilt. And I said, oh, why did you give her a quilt? And she said she was such a lovely young woman. I had to give her something. And it was a quilt. So thank you for sharing this with all of us. Debra, have you kept up the tradition? It sounds like you went to medical school. Maybe you have not had time to take up the craft yet.

No, I haven't had time to take up the craft, but I also have been, I've saved the quilts from my mother and my grandmother. The ones that I have are shared between my sister and I. And whenever my brothers got married, my mother would give them a quilt or

or, you know, as a gift, you know, at the wedding. So I do have a couple of quilts. But, you know, with space, I ended up sharing them with my sister, and we're going to pass them on to the next generation. Yeah. Hey, Debra, thank you so much for that call. So many special stories. I mean, Elaine, it does feel, you know, it feels like these quilts somehow...

have a special capacity to carry memory across place and time. Like, why is that? I mean, it's interesting. I mean, it's not like a pottery, a piece of pottery couldn't do that or a table, but it just feels like quilts do, like just in point of fact, the quilts do this. Absolutely. And I think that last caller, Deborah, the way she was describing how pieces of her prom dress, her jeans are in it. I mean,

It's not just any piece of your life that is in the quilt, but it's the thing that you live in and that you wear. I mean, when you think of clothing. So it's a kind of medium that's so intimate, like you feel it on your skin all the time. I mean, I just think about just staring at your closet and thinking about what you're going to wear. There's so much...

and thinking and energy that goes into even how we live with our garments. So then to have these materials sort of repurposed, reimagined, and have a new life in this new art object is,

I think it's just one way that quilts carry memory just because they bring so many associations and lived experience into it. That's cool. Here's a couple of other great stories here. Anne writes, I have a quilt made by my grandmother, an immigrant escaping poverty who landed in Anaheim in 1920 and worked in the Orange Groves.

She sewed the top piece, but my favorite aspect of the quilt are the uniform tiny hand stitches that hold the quilt together. She said these were done by a group of women friends who helped each other finish their quilts. I just love being covered by this work made possible by many friendly hands working together, probably over chatter and sharing old wives tales. I cannot wait to visit the exhibit in Berkeley. Another

Another listener writes,

Ah, God. Keep these stories coming. Forum at kqed.org. You can give us a call with your stories, 866-733-6786. Of course, we're talking about the new exhibit at the Berkeley Art Museum, Rooted West, 20th Century African American Quilts in California with curator Elaine Yao and Ora Clay, a member of the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for more right after the break.

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Welcome back to Forum, Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about the new exhibit Rooted West, 20th Century African American Quilts in California. It is at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. We are joined by Ora Clay, who has a quilt in the show. She's also a member of the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland, former middle school librarian. Thank you very much for that.

Elaine Yao is Associate Curator and Academic Liaison at the museum. She's also the curator of the show. Let's go back to the phone just for a second here. This is really interesting. Lonnie in Hayward. Welcome.

Oh, thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to say that my mother, who is Chinese, and my dad, who is black, from Georgia, of course, went in World War II. And my mother taught Hawaiian quilting. And so it wouldn't qualify necessarily for this, but you haven't mentioned Hawaiian quilting, which is very popular now. And she was teaching it 67 years ago.

The patterns she got were from Native American Hawaiians, some relatives and some friends that she knew. And they were not privy to commercial interest because they were held within families and passed down from generation to generation. So Hawaiian quilting is very different, but it's a beautiful art form. And I hope at some point there's a display or there has been one before. I have friends who quilt. I go to a big black church. And the quilting within black churches is phenomenal.

So thank you. My mother was doing this years ago. We have quilts with her moomoos and my little t-shirts and my brother's clothes too. So thank you for this show. Wow. Hey, Lonnie, thank you so much. I was just over here Googling Hawaiian quilting. Elaine, do you want to talk about it at all, just as part of the broader practice here?

Oh, my gosh. I don't even think I'm qualified to talk about it. I feel like the caller who just mentioned it. Yeah. Alani, do you want to describe what might make Hawaiian quilting different? I mean, I'm seeing kind of botanical inspired repeating patterns as being maybe part of the tradition there.

Yes, it depends on the lineage of the family. I have Hawaiian relatives, and they would be able to talk more about it. My mother is long gone. But they are usually very intricate, and they all have names. And because they come from families, and, you know, Hawaiians have been in Hawaii for thousands of years, they reflect the kingdoms and the family lines and lineage. So they're just different shapes. Rarely are they geometrical, but they're going to resemble things that are in Hawaii, flowers, plants. They all have names.

The quilts all had names. All the designs have names. And my mother would cut the patterns out on butcher paper and make her own patterns when they were given to her. So they're very different, and they're not puffy or warm because, you know, it's the tropics. They tend to be two-level, and the other side is usually a flat color or different colors. But they're very different than American quilting, you know, mainland quilting. So I'm

I've never heard anything about it, but it's very well known in Hawaii. Yeah. Oh, man. So cool, Lonnie. I recommend to people, they just Google Hawaiian quilts. You'll see a lot there, and they are incredibly beautiful. That's very cool. Thanks for doing that. They have a very strong cultural lineage per family, per royal family, per dynasty. They're not probably all commercial, but you can only find it in Hawaii. So cool. Thanks so much for sharing that.

Our own Brian Watt, KQED's Brian Watt, writes, my grandma Evelyn made quilts in North Carolina. She gave me a few over the years. The last two were for my kids when the pandemic forced us into home studios. I had to broadcast from my cold basement. No heat down there. So I wrapped up in my chair at the microphone in my grandma's quilts. That's my story. Nice. So cool.

One thing I'm really curious about, and Elaine, maybe you want to talk about this, is the specific role of the quilt keepers. Like, you really call that out in the show, right? There's the quilt makers, of course, but then there are people who, not just collectors, but people who were sort of tasked with this very special memory work. Yes. The quilt keeper became so much more important as I was working on this show, quite frankly, because...

because of them we have these objects that survive and you know for for me for audiences who are coming to these quilts and you The only way that we really have access to these individual stories and family histories are through these objects and so yeah, it's it's the they're part of the the preservation work, right and

How much of the provenance was like attached to each of these quilts? Like did we know that Eli Leon was an obsessive collector, but did he keep records that were useful to you? Or did you basically just have a name? I noticed in some of the museum labels, you know, you're using census things. You're using publicly available documents to try and track down more information about these people, which made me think maybe there wasn't much information attached to each quilt.

Yeah, it was a mixed bag. To Eli Leon's credit, he did take meticulous records. And so we do have artists' names, some basic information about where they were born, when they came to California, etc.

He did record names in some of the interviews that he conducted about who were these quilt makers' teachers, often a mother or a grandmother and so on. But certainly the genealogies that you were just mentioning are things that I wanted to confirm and have a better sense of, and so that's where the census records come in.

In some remarkable instances, there are two examples that come to mind where we have an oral history or an account from the family themselves that talk about how the quilt passed down between different family members before coming to Eli and then coming to the museum. And so...

Those for me, that's the gold mine. As an art historian, as a curator, when you have that firsthand account of how an object moves, that's where you really want to spotlight.

As I look through this, the book that accompanies, you know, sort of different essays and things, it does seem like there's a quite complicated relationship between at least some quilters in the African-American community, Eli Leon, the Berkley Art Museum, and your own sense of curation and...

and what the respectful way of presenting and preserving these are. I just wanted to give you a second to sort of talk about that because it does feel like oftentimes with collectors of particular artworks, there can be, I don't know, different types of feelings that arise for people about an African-American artistic tradition being collected by a white guy outside of that tradition. Yeah.

Yeah, and Eli, in that sense, Eli was a very, I think, complex figure. A way that's helpful for me to describe is that he was so passionate about the art, so much so sometimes that he sort of forgot the heart of what was behind the tradition, which is really these relationships between family members and the transmission of love and care. I think for him, he, during his lifetime, he

He was really preoccupied, not necessarily in a bad way, but in such an intense way of thinking through African-American quilt making and trying to find aesthetic retentions back to the continent. So looking at African textiles, looking at African weaving and trying to establish a relationship based on visual characteristics alone, right?

And so I think that's kind of where the trouble arose, where you have somebody who is using his platform, publishing and curating exhibitions and really making an argument for what he called Afro-traditional aesthetics. Right.

And then meanwhile, then you have a community of contemporary quilt makers who are thinking, well, I don't make quilts like this. My things don't look like this. And yet, so then you have this sort of cultural landscape where you have a very outsized voice coming from a white man that can diminish the voices of other black women artists. Yeah.

Do you want to say anything about this? Do you have thoughts about it? What I was thinking as Elaine was talking is that displaying these quilts and talking about these quilts is giving us a platform to talk, to talk to each other. I mean, people have preconceived ideas already, and they're saying, you know, I don't want to have anything to do with it. But

Let's talk about it. Let's see why. Let's see what we can do. Let's see, you know. So I appreciate having the platform to discuss our differences and how we feel about it. And I think that's what this exhibition does also. Okay.

Some more favorite quilts. Some nice comments here. Susie writes, I want to make a shout out to Gerstein Scott, who was my neighbor. Her tie quilt is in the show. She was my best friend and she and I sewed a quilt together. I have three of her quilts and one of them I sleep underneath every night. It is king size and made completely by hand. She was a remarkable woman of force.

Yeah. Go ahead, Elaine. Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for that comment. That is exactly the impression of Mrs. Scott that I've received in talking with her son, Mr. Hall, who has moved back to Texas. Simply that she was a remarkable woman, so generous, kind.

Just judging from what Mr. Scott says, every time I share a little bit about the exhibition and give him updates about how his mother's quilt is looking in the show, I can hear him getting emotional over the phone. So just by virtue of that, I know that she was such a special, special woman. Mm-hmm.

Leslie writes, I have made a small quilt for my first son. It was made out of squares of my maternity clothes, which were made for me by my mother. This quilt holds special meaning as I have since lost both my mother and son. Oh, Leslie. Catherine writes, I'm lucky to own several of the quilts that my great grandmother made. She was born in Ohio in 1889 and quilted 502 quilts on a foot operated tree.

Yeah.

That does seem, or that seems like a tough one, right? Because at some level, this is your art. And what if somebody spills coffee on it? It is a tough question because my mother quilted out of necessity. She quilted to keep us warm, to keep us safe. The houses had no insulation, no central heat. So we needed to use those quilts. I had three or four quilts. We all had three or four quilts on our beds.

You know, so it was the utility of the quilts. So there was no question about saving them or putting them on a wall. I mean, we did what we had to do to stay safe and to stay warm. So now, as I said, I can use that quilt that's been used over and over and over again for the art of it. So we do have to, I mean, like I said, we had to use the quilts regularly.

for the purpose of the beds. But now we don't have to. We can save some of those precious quilts because we have blankets and all of those things now that we can use. We don't have to use the quilts. And I have a quilt on my bed that Marian Coleman did

And I carefully, you know, fold it back every night and all of that because I am trying to keep it safe, but also trying to use it. So it is hard. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. So, gosh, there's so many different good quilt stories. All right, Maureen in San Rafael. Welcome.

Hi, hello. Thank you for this program. It's wonderful. I just wanted to make a comment. My great-grandmother was the quilter in our family. I never met her, and the quilt got passed on to my grandmother and then our family eventually. And my mother, unfortunately, died.

you know, fell to untreated mental illness for a long, long time. And I was back at her place and had to go through a storage unit and found all of our family quilts that were in great disrepair and had just been damaged in a storage locker. And it was so heartbreaking to me. And yet just such a testimony to...

you know issues like the brokenness of our family in some ways and what what had happened to come with my mom and my daughter who's got special needs uh... briefly suffered uh... cardiac arrest in the fall and we have been really looking to find a medium an art medium that we can start to put her story in our story together and we are in the process of you know starting to uh... flesh out a book

And we want part of that to be quilts. We want part of that to try to revive the tradition and just make something that's going to speak to our story of 25 years of just adversity, but then also incredible healing and just the resiliency that we've had to have, you know, not having a family. We don't have a blood family that we can really rely on. And so, you know, I love the stories about weaving the clothes into them. That's, and I'm going to take that.

I'm going to take that and use that in our story, too, because my daughter, because of her special needs, you know, she needs different ways of interpreting her story. And I think this is just a perfect story on forum for us to hear. And I'm so looking forward to going. My daughter's in a brain rehab unit right now in Chicago.

in Emeryville and I'm going to shoot over one day and see this show. Oh, you got to get some inspiration for it and hopefully she can join us too. So thank you all so much. This is such a beautiful story and I'm so grateful and so appreciative of everything that you've put into this, to your life's work with this. It's just wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Let's try to squeeze in Wanda in Oakland who wants to talk a little bit more about Eli Leon. Thank you so much for joining us, Wanda.

Hi. I just wanted people to know more about him because all these years that, you know, he's been working behind the scenes and I was in his home many times and he had stacks and stacks of quilts, mostly, you know, mostly finished, but

I just want people to realize the impact that he had on quilting in the Bay Area. He is like a god. He really worked so hard to promote quilting.

the art of quilting in the Bay Area. Hey, Wanda, thank you. Really appreciate that. And, you know, much more about Eli Leon in the book accompanying the exhibit. You can check out different perspectives on his role in quilting, but it kind of

want to acknowledge that many of these just thousands of quilts there we got to end on some of these comments because they're really quite quite beautiful Allison writes I want to share about a quilt my grandmother made me by hand double axe head pattern that I chose when I was six she made it out of the scraps of all of my old children's clothes which she had also made for me

Now, this was in the 70s, so these clothes are bright, but still the warmest thing I own. We take it camping in the Sierras. The connection with my grandma is still there, so close each time I hold it. In a world full of imitations, these quilts are tactile, authentic, full of real connection, memories, and emotion. Thank you for this exhibition and this show."

Carol writes, my aunt, a self-taught interior decorator, made a quilt for my newborn daughter 53 years ago. Now I have it and I just realized that she used scraps from her client's curtains or upholstery. It will go to a granddaughter. Another listener writes, when my father-in-law passed, my mother-in-law had taken his shirts and made them into quilts for each sibling. One for my husband and each of his siblings. Each shirt used has a story and my husband has vivid memories of his dad tied to each shirt.

Jesus, people are trying to make us cry in here. Diane writes,

At first, I didn't even know why I was feeling this until I realized the bark fabric with tropical botanicals was the same upholstery my grandmother had. I'm emotional as I'm writing this because it was like going through a time portal and being with my grandmother again. She came to this country from Poland with her brother when she was 14 and never saw her parents again due to two world wars. This connection between two women who lived in different worlds and struggled in different ways but shared this fabric is profound."

Oh, man. Quilts. What can I say? Joy Lily says, as an art quilter, I struggle to get recognition as a real artist. Your guests in this show help bring to the published consciousness the fact that quilts, however humble, are also historically significant works of art. Amen to that. We've been talking about the new exhibit, Rooted West, 20th Century African American Quilts in California at the Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive. We're going to talk about the new exhibit, Rooted West, 20th Century African American Quilts in California at the Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive.

Aura Clay, member of the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. For sharing your stories. And Elaine Yao, associate curator and academic liaison at the museum, curator of the show. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you to all of our listeners for your calls and comments and your love for quilts. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another hour of Forum Ahead with Mina Kim.

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