Quilts are archives of hands, memory, relationships within families and across communities. Jenn Steverson reads their cloth and stitches to learn about the stories told in stylistic choices and construction elements. Her work centers African Diaspora communities, and she looks to textiles to tell her things that were not preserved in written archives. 

She moves between material culture and written records to gain a fuller, richer picture of Black communities. These techniques are valuable because she is often forced read against the grain of primary sources that are tainted by prejudice and dismissive of African Diaspora cultural practices.

In this lecture Jenn will speak about her artistic foundation which is African American craft traditions. She will review archival research techniques that she uses when working on a quilt or quilt inspired textile installation. She will focus in particular on cross referencing and the importance of citation when an artist is inspired by a specific artist, creative community, or region.

Dates
Wednesday, September 27th, 2023

Time
2 pm – 3:30 pm ET

Location
Zoom, a link will be send to participants the day before the event

Cost
All Tatter lectures are considered community programming and therefore ticket prices are donation-based. The suggested donation for each of these lectures is $25. Donations start at $15 for each lecture and $90 for the whole series.

*This session will be recorded. A link to the recording will be emailed to all those who register following the live session. This link is live for 24 hours only.

ABOUT JENN STEVERSON

Jennifer Steverson (she/her/hers) is an independent scholar and multi media artist based in Central Texas. Her work is informed by the cultural ecologies of the African Diaspora, specifically by the way that Black people have crafted community and resilience practices through art, craft, and agriculture. She completed her undergraduate work at Eugene Lang College, a division of the New School and her masters degree in Community and Regional Planning at UT Austin. Jennifer was a Hive Collective Artist in Residence in 2019. In 2020, she completed a Texas Folklife Apprenticeship focused on quilting. She was a researcher on the Carver Museum’s African American Presence exhibit which opened in February 2020. Her work has appeared in the Rootwork Journal.