We are honored to host extraordinary artist, curator, and historian Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi in an artist talk centering on her work as quilter, community builder and collector. In addition to hearing about her work, Dr. Mazloomi will be in conversation with curator, researcher, creative practitioner, and most recent editor of TATTERJournal, Dr. Sharbreon Plummer. Drawing from their extensive careers in the fields of fiber art, history, and cultural preservation, this special talk illuminates the lifelong legacy and practice of Dr. Mazloomi and brings together two influential voices whose work continues to shape contemporary conversations around identity and cloth.
Date
Tuesday, July 14th, 2026
Time
6:00 – 7:00 pm
Cost
Tickets for this event are sold on a sliding scale with a suggested donation of $25. The dropdown menu also includes other donation options.
Tatter Library is a registered 501(c)3. Our speaker series is part of our community programming and proceeds support continued access to artists talks, library collection, and TATTERJournal.
As always, we are grateful for your support, which ensures the continuation and preservation of textile knowledge. Thank you for making this series possible.
Location
Zoom, a link will be sent to participants before the event.
Dr. Carolyn L. Mazloomi is an artist, author, historian, and curator acknowledged as being among the most influential African American quilt historians in the United States. Widely exhibited in the United States and internationally, her quilts have been included in five exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery. Her artwork can be found in numerous important museums and corporate collections, such as the Wadsworth Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Fine Arts Museum Boston, Chicago Institute of Art, and the American Museum of Art and Design. She has appeared on television shows such as CBS Morning Show, Reading Rainbow, The Today Show, CNN, and has been the subject of several film documentaries. Mazloomi has written sixteen books on African American quilts and received several national book awards.
In 1985 she founded the Women of Color Quilters Network, an international organization with a membership of 1700, which has been a major force in fostering the fiberart works of African American people. Through Dr. Mazloomi’s effort WCQN members have had their quilts presented in venues such as prominent museums and galleries, and in internationally traveled exhibitions. She is a frequent consultant for art exhibitions, authors, and historians.
In 2003 Dr. Mazloomi was awarded the first Ohio Heritage Fellowship Award. Ohio Heritage Fellows are among the state’s living cultural treasures. Fellows embody the highest level of artistic achievement in their work, and the highest level of service in the teaching and other work they do in their communities to ensure that their artistic traditions stay strong.
In 2014 Dr. Mazloomi has given the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Award, the highest award in the nation for traditional art. She was also inducted into the Quilters Hall of Fame Museum the same year and received the United States Artist Fellowship, and Taproot Artist Fellowship.
Mazloomi has been involved in the economic development of women through the arts for over thirty years, and has been recognized by the International Labour Department in Geneva and the United Nations for her efforts.
Dr. Sharbreon Plummer (she/her) is a curator, researcher, and creative practitioner with a heart for expanding how artistic practice is defined, supported, and framed through theory.
Her upbringing in Southern Louisiana informs her interest
and investment in how culture and ancestral memory act as influencers of identity and contemporary artistic production, especially within textile-based practices. For nearly fifteen years, her praxis has involved shaping resources for communities of creators whose work serves as an act of resistance, self-determination, and collective freedom.
She has facilitated and presented work at institutions such as Project Row Houses, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Rhode Island School of Design, Americans for the Arts, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and Princeton University, among others. A few of her creative projects include her internationally distributed zine, Diasporic Threads: Black Women, Fibre and Textiles (2022) and The People’s Quilting Bee (2023-24), an international public humanities course and quilting circle co-founded with Dr. Jess Bailey. She has organized curatorial projects such as Of Salt and Spirit (2024), Stitching Abolition ( 2022) and Mirrored Migration (2017).
Sharbreon has also been featured as an artist-in-residence at Rogers Art Loft (Las Vegas, NV) and Arquetopia (Oaxaca, MX). She is the author of the forthcoming text Black Quilts: Memory, Methods and Medicine (Chronicle Books, 2026) and is a staff writer at Quiltfolk Magazine. Sharbreon currently serves as Artistic Director at Threewalls and maintains her creative consultancy AYA Thought Studio. She holds a Ph.D. in Arts Administration, Education and Policy at The Ohio State University.
To learn more about the work of Sharbreon Plummer visit sharbreonplummer.com/@sharbreon