I was recently introduced to the work of Radka Donnell and it completely changed the way I view quilting. A quilter, author and activist, Donnell wrote the groundbreaking book Quilts as Women’s Art: A Quilt Poetics.

It is a bold and controversial book that  basically gives a different meaning and purpose to quilts. She uses the book and her quilts to reach out to other women and enable dialogue about the body, emotions, and human contact.

In her own words…..

“More than 30 years ago, in Lawrence, Kansas, making quilts became an issue of liberation for me. Thinking and talking about quilts, learning about their special nature as everyday objects in our lives and as women’s art, have ever since, been a context for my search for the neglected part of myself and for a better human climate altogether. In my work in cloth, I not only work out my longing for a more perfect contact and union with other persons, but also strive to express universal human fears of oppression and death. Making quilts has become for me a struggle to secure a social space which is inviolable, fecund and hospitable to a sense of self and of the human community nourished by the spirit of the Goddess, a new consciousness protective of what is left of nature on this planet.

In the piecing, handling, and exhibiting of my quilts, I ran up against all prohibitions I had received as a woman: not to reach out, not to touch, not to get attention, not to demonstrate love, not to attempt to effect changes in society at large.  I pursue the making of quilts as a personal vision and as a joining of hands with other women making their cultural contribution in any walk of life and resisting oppression.

To dramatize the need for co-existence and difference among different individuals and cultures, I bring together textiles of diverse origins so as to make a vital statement, cognizant of our spiritual, deeply social sexual nature.  The format of quilts, sized by its reference to the body, allows me to bring in my emotions and body feelings also life-size, to create from the body outward and focused toward the body through the work of touch necessary to the piecing. The intimate connection between my emotions, the materials I use, how I touch these, and how the final product is used, namely, to warm and celebrate others; all this helps me to give my best.”

Whether you agree with Donnell or not, I can’t help but look at quilts as much more than a blanket (as the dictionary suggests.) To me, quilts are a representation of life.

Related posts:

1. Yvonne Porcella: Bold Strokes
2. My first quilt
3. Isak’s Zoo Quilt
4. Building a Quilting Sisterhood
5. Too Cute Not to Share