Art, Art History and Design, School of
School of Art, Art History, and Design: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity
Accessibility Remediation
If you are unable to use this item in its current form due to accessibility barriers, you may request remediation through our remediation request form.
Document Type
Article
Date of this Version
2015
Abstract
Mapping Nebraska is a drawn, stitched and digitally imaged cartography (physical, social, cultural, sociological) of that state. This nine-year project, now in the permanent collection of the International Quilt Museum, includes a hand-drawn Locator Map, quilted and embroidered Terrain Squares, on-the-ground documentation or Surveys, and Ground Cloths, mixed mixed media textile constructions which respond to a particular location in a more intuitive and imaginative way.
In this public talk at the International Quilt Museum I give a visual overview of my development of the fourth component of Mapping Nebraska—a large-scale textile construction, titled Prairie Skin, designed to wrap a human body and to function as map, memory, shelter and shroud.
I see the outer layer of the Prairie Skin, quilted in an eccentric log cabin pattern, as protection and celebration. I relate its grid and order to history and cultivation. I see the inner layer, with its hand-written text and organic meanders, as memory and commentary—information which warns but also consoles.
I view the Prairie Skin like the prairie and its the grasses: fragile and threatened but also tenacious and resilient
Comments
Copyright © 2015 Elizabeth Ingraham