Artist Statement
Riptides explores mother and daughters across four generations, telling layered stories of women as they embrace/reject these critical relationships. Moving from infancy and girlhood to leaving home, and from marriage and motherhood to her own daughter leaving home, each woman struggles in her own time and in her own way with conflicting imperatives to both stay and leave. Utilizing the Ocean Waves quilt pattern from a family quilt, the artist drew from the histories of her great-grandmother, grandmother and mother (as well as herself) to create the visible and hidden text.
Materials & Technique
The book utilizes vintage fabrics, thread, vellum, and paper; it combines both a “meander” map fold and Turkish map fold structure so that both the “quilt block” of each woman’s story and the whole “quilt” of the book can be seen.