DePaul University Via Sapientiae College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences 6-2014 Piecing together creativity: feminist aesthetics and the crafting of quilts Melanie Anne Pauls DePaul University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd Recommended Citation Pauls, Melanie Anne, "Piecing together creativity: feminist aesthetics and the crafting of quilts" (2014). College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 166. https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/166 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Piecing Together Creativity: Feminist Aesthetics and the Crafting of Quilts A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts June, 2014 BY Melanie Anne Pauls Department of Women's and Gender Studies College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Depaul University Chicago, Illinois 2 Acknowledgements: Chair: Dr. Elizabeth Kelly Committee Members: Dr. Joanna Gardner-Huggett Dr. Beth Catlett This thesis would not have been possible without the inspiration and assistance of: Dr. Namita Goswami, Dr. Laila Farah, Dr. Frida Kerner Furman, Dr. Ann Russo, Dr. Darrel Moore, and Leo Masalihit. Jon Cohen, Jennifer Pauls, Kathy Pauls, Daniel Pauls, Stephanie Pauls, Cecilia Roberts, Lavinia Roberts, Abbey Fox, and my creative extended family (past and present). 3 Table of Contents 1: Introduction . 5 Thesis Statement . 8 The Context of Quilting . 8 Feminist Aesthetics and Quilting . .10 Methodology . 14 Literature Review . 15 The Aesthetics of Modernism . 20 Mutually Reinforcing Hierarchies of Aesthetics . 22 Defining “Art” According to the Producer . 28 Addressing Issues in the Politics of Aesthetics . 34 Outline of Chapters . 40 2: Quilting's Destabilizing of Traditional Hierarchies . 42 The Elevation of Quilts to “Art” . 44 Artists' Appropriation of Quilting . 56 The Complex Status of Quilts . 63 Quilting's Blurring and Destablizing of Hierarchies . 73 3: Quilting's Communities of Craft. 81 Traditional Myths of Art and Individuality . 84 Hand-crafting, Collective Innovation, and Creative Interdependence . 96 Community and Quilting as Care of Self and Others . 108 4 4: Quilting's Embrace of Utility. 122 The Disregarding of Utility in Dominant Aesthetics . 125 Beauty as Useful . 138 Utility as Beautiful . 141 The Importance of Utility/Beauty in Everyday Life . 145 5: Quilting's Heirloom and Scrap Quilting Traditions . 154 Capitalism and the Devaluing of Feminized Labor . 159 Consumerism and Craft as a Luxury . 164 Heirloom-value and Resisting Commodification . 169 Scrap-quilt Aesthetic and Resisting Consumerism . 172 6: Conclusion . 187 Figures. 199 Notes. 202 Bibliography. 205 5 Chapter 1: Introduction Growing up, I was surrounded by the work of my mother's hands. The work was driven by habits of poverty and necessity, but also by the love and care of her family, as well as by a strong creative impulse. Both my parents grew up in contexts that taught them to value every last scrap, and their skills were put to the test as young parents struggling to make ends meet. Their financial situation had improved somewhat by the time that I, the last of three widely-spaced daughters, came around. But the patterns of life were set, and my life was rich with hand-sewn hand-me-down clothes, newly-knitted sweaters and afghans, and vegetables grown in the back yard. The making of useful and beautiful things seemed a natural part of life, a continuation of the traditions of my grandparents and great-grandparents. I felt intimately connected to the working hands of my great-grandmothers as I examined the quilts they had sewn, which always took turns covering my parents' neatly made bed. When I was small, I was only able to see a strip of the quilt hanging heavily over the edge of the bed, until my struggling climb up on top revealed a magnificent array of colors and patterns. I could run my tiny fingers along the furrows of nearly invisible stitches and wonder about the life of each piece of fabric in the enormous composition. Was that print from a dress? Who wore it, what was life like for her, what events did that fabric witness? When did my great-grandmother decide that its life as a dress was finished, cutting it carefully into elements that would be recomposed into the new life of a quilt? Did she feel as happy as I did when I drew a picture of an imagined story and filled it in with bright colors? Did the people who watched her sew smile at her and exclaim, “What an artist!”? From my perspective sitting on the bed, I could only see a small area at a time as I 6 crawled from one end of the bed to the other to continue reading a subtle narrative, some meaning that tied together all those disparate fabrics and that I was not quite able to understand. Something made sense to me about each quilt's story, but I would be left slightly frustrated that I could not make out the whole picture, and I would often give up on my examinations and simply rest my head against its soft, substantial surface. I could only view a quilt close-up, and no matter how fascinating each area was, I was unable to reflect on its broader significance. As I grew older and taller, I continued to look fondly at the quilts that I could now view from a distance, but I would usually end up flinging myself down on the bed to bask in the afternoon sunlight and in the warmth of the space that seemed so filled with Mom's presence: her jewelry on top of the dresser, her books piled up in the corner, her vanity at which I would have my hair curled every Christmas Eve and Easter, her cross-stitches on the walls and knitted afghan at the bottom of the bed. From my changing perspective as I grew, Mom's things were still tied to mysterious meanings and the rituals of femininity, but my feelings about some of them began to shift. In particular, I started to find the cross-stitches on the walls of my own bedroom irritating. I could recall the exciting rituals of their creation: the gazing through several books to chose the pattern I wanted for my birthday each year; the process as groups of colored stitches fused together into the desired picture; the tedious washing, stretching, and framing that finished the piece. But for a teenager who wanted to be a “real artist,” the magic of cross-stitches had faded. I now saw them as homey, insignificant, and frankly, embarrassing, so I stuffed them under my bed, both to keep them out of the sight of my friends and to avoid the creeping feelings of guilt that accompanied what seemed like a rejection of my mother. In their places on my walls appeared a growing collection of posters and cards, most of them souvenirs from my visits to art 7 museums. I indulged myself with reproductions of glossy paintings, especially Pre-Raphaelite paintings of beautiful young women. I longed to be both the lovely women and the painters who created such fantastic images. This was where I looked in order to find a new feminine ideal and a more “respectable” creative ideal. However, after I attended college, read feminist theory and philosophy, and struggled with my inability to attain the identity of a real fine “artist,” I began to question my perspective again. What did I swallow with my dreams of “high art?” What did it mean to embrace the ideals of femininity reflected in the work of male painters? Where did women artists fit in? And eventually I wondered: Did I lose anything when I pushed away the domestic creativity of my mother? All of these questions solidified and grew in weight and complexity as I continued to study for my Master's in Women's and Gender Studies. And I happened upon quilts yet again, though this time they were in glossy images reminiscent of the art museum I had recreated in my adolescent bedroom. I became aware of the vast world of quilts, from crafting books, fabric shops, and popular fairs to the arenas of “high art” museums, historical scholarship, and feminist theory. Quilting encompasses every force that had affected my journey with creativity and femininity; it is a major battleground of the opposing aesthetic orientations that I had embraced and rejected alternately. What more than the quilt simultaneously symbolizes feminine domestic craft in America and has had a profound presence in the fine art world? Where better, then, to tease out the complexities of femininity, creativity, craft, and art? 8 Thesis Statement: In this thesis, I argue that a feminist study of quiltmaking opens the possibility of a different characterization of quilts and quilters from the traditional view of quiltmaking as primarily done by grannies and thus not “art,” while also asserting that a feminist analysis of what counts as “art” reclaims the value of quilting's heritage as a feminized domestic craft. A feminist approach allows us to see quilting as a medium that actually bridges “high art” and craft, with the potential of furthering a liberatory feminist project of nurturing human creativity. The Context of Quilting In the United States, the quilt has served as an icon of domestic comfort and American resourcefulness, as well as a metaphor to describe the piecing together of disparate parts into a whole (Torsney and Elsley 1-6).