My Couriers Project:

Finding my voice through research, writing, and quilting

In March, 2017, I found myself searching: probing for positive means and methods to express my frustrations, sadness, and desperations as the world around me turned to negativity, sarcasm and sometimes outright hate. My spiritual connections helped: deep talk and prayer through journaling and group conversations with my Companions Spiritual Group and my pastor.  My pastor asked me to think about how I could react with what I had been given with a touch of humanity and humility?  I pondered: “Is God calling me to do something new?”

Jan Richardson in Sanctuary of Women says, “Our experiences rarely contain just one meaning; much more often they contain multiple meanings or deeper meaning that only reveal themselves with time and attention. “ (Richardson, 127)
Perhaps my past was nudging me with new meanings:

• When I kept a diary/journal affectionately called Mindy through junior high and high school chronicling my stories of angst, happiness, despair and joy.
• When I constructed a Cathedrals window quilt in1990 with each “window” a different piece of fabric I had used to sew an outfit for one of my children. Each piece of fabric told a story.
•   When I turned to poetry and journaling as healing therapy and prayer after the devastating loss of my husband, David, in 1993.
• When I first observed Harriet Powers Bible Quilt in 1997 at the Smithsonian

Numerous events in the last couple of years also illustrated multiple meanings.  In late 2007 I started a Spiritual Quilt Journal (SQJ): writing a spiritual entry and designing a matching quilt square for each month in 2008. At the end of the year I combined the squares into a quilt and gave numerous talks to local groups.
In 2012 I used The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom by Christine Valters Painter to journal spiritually with fabric asking myself “How do I find my spiritual voice?  How do I merge my passions? What ancient paths should I seek?

In March, 2016, The Flint Institute of Arts held an exhibit “From Heart to Hand: African American Quilts” and I was introduced to Yvonne Wells, who “describes herself as a storyteller first and a folk quilter second, works with an incredibly broad range of images which she classifies as religious , sociopolitical, and picture quilts as well as mere “doodle pieces.” (Just How I Picture It in My Mind,79) Discovering pictures of her quilts, “Yesterday, Civil Rights in the South III” and “The Great American Pastime: Homage to Jackie Robinson I,” changed my perspective of story quilts forever

Later that same year of 2016 I decided to explore more deeply, Jan Richardson, and found again Harriet Powers.  In her chapter, “Mysteries of Making” in Sanctuary of Women , Richardson focuses on Powers and how she interspersed scripture, prayer, interpretation and quilt.
That fall, I gave a presentation to my Companions on Harriet Powers, Valorie Wells and Jan Richardson, a prewrite to my Couriers Project.
All of these events, discussions, and reflective prayers led to March, 2017 when I decided to focus on my Couriers Project. Using as much positive energy as I could muster I would research through deep reading and journaling, write with blog entries and poetry and sew designed quilt squares of women of history and today who have shown deep courage and conviction in the face of their own tensions, troubles, turmoil, and turbulence.  

Sources

Hutchins, Catherine E.,editor. Just How I Picture it in My Mind, Contemporary African American Quilts from the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. Published by the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama, 2006.  

Painter, Christine Valters. The Artist’s Rule.  Sorin Books: Notre Dame, Indiana, 2011.

Painter, Christine Valters. Lectio Divina, the sacred art.   Woodstock, Vermont: Skylight Paths Publishing, 2011.

Richardson, Jan. In the Sanctuary of Women. Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2010.