unfinished
i viewed art, and it impacted me in unexpected ways. again.
hello friends.
yesterday i went to berkeley art museum and pacific film archive (bampfa) to see routed west: twentieth-century african american quilts in california.
routed west: twentieth-century african american quilts in california traces the flow and flourishing of quilts in the context of the second great migration. as millions of african americans sought greater opportunities and escape from the south’s oppressive racial environment from 1940 to 1970, they carried quilts as functional objects and physical reminders of the homes they left behind. simultaneously, the quiltmaking skills that many migrants brought with them—frequently learned from mothers, grandmothers, and other kin—spurred the creation of a new wave of african american quiltmaking in the later part of the twentieth century, extending its roots into the western united states. the quilts in this exhibition explore the medium’s unique capacity for connecting kin across time and distance, holding memory and ancestral knowledge, and opening up space for beauty and artistic ingenuity.
the exhibited quilts ranged from simple, hand-stitched pieces crafted in the jim crow south out of clothing and scraps to meticulous, machine-sewn masterpieces created in the san francisco bay area. some of the quilts told stories of migration to california, some used photographs and copies of documents to share family histories, and some expressed religious faith or portrayed community events and histories (such as the marion coleman quilt shown above depicting a scene from an oakland black cowboy association parade).
some of the most visually stunning works were those by rosie lee tompkins, which commanded attention from across the gallery with their bold colors and compositions. but the pieces i found most emotionally resonant were in the "tending generations" section of the exhibit, which featured groupings of quilts created by members of different generations of the same family. there were also quilts that had been started by one family member and finished by another and quilts made by one family member that incorporated part of another family member's work. these quilts expressed love, care, pride in family, and communality - embodied and preserved in textile art.
i rode public transit to and from berkeley, listening to the audiobook edition of relinquished: the politics of adoption and the privilege of american motherhood by gretchen sisson, a sociologist studying abortion and adoption. publisher weekly's starred review calls the book "a devastating and urgent condemnation of america’s adoption industry":
the adoption industry has historically been predicated on state-sanctioned family separation. [sisson] traces america’s long history of child removal, including the sale of children born into slavery, the forced assimilation of native american children, and the conscription as farm laborers of children born to poor white mothers in the 19th century. she pinpoints the emergence of the modern adoption industry in the post-wwii “baby scoop” era, when unmarried women were coerced into relinquishing their children, and shows that today’s private adoption industry continues in the tradition of separating disadvantaged families.
relinquished blends two decades of research, including takeaways from sisson’s research for the turnaway study - which details what happens to women who are denied abortions - with first-person accounts from women who relinquished their children for adoption. the turnaway study was cited by justices breyer, kagan, and sotomayor in their dissent in the dobbs decision overturning roe v. wade:
the reality is that few women denied an abortion will choose adoption.[17] the vast majority will continue, just as in roe and casey’s time, to shoulder the costs of childrearing. whether or not they choose to parent, they will experience the profound loss of autonomy and dignity that coerced pregnancy and birth always impose.[18]
relinquished is a heavy audio read, and i finished the book last night just before going to sleep. the dissonance between the literal intergenerational threads on display in the routed west exhibition and the stories in relinquished about the severing of those threads through adoption and other forms of family separation was striking. it clearly stirred up the emotional sediment of my own closed adoption. i woke up at 6 am, still halfway under the spell of the last dream in this sequence:
dream #1
i’m at a small store talking to a man behind a counter. somehow it comes up in conversation that we are both adopted. he shows me a work of art made from a small wooden window frame with glass panes, about the size of an 8×10 photo overall. a black and white photo of parent and child fills the window. i tell him i like it, and he shows me how he can play a video inside the frame as well, a black and white clip of an old home movie. he says it's called “just before the bomb went off.”
dream #2
i’m in college and i want to change my major. i’ve heard someone say that it was through acting out as a kid that adults realized he needed extra attention, and that’s what turned his life around. when i heard that i thought, fuck, i’ve gone about my life all wrong because i was never fine and my needs were never properly met. i decide i want to study the lifetime negative effects of being an overly compliant child.
dream #3
i’m at the house of a friend. she has been married to a woman for the past five years or so, and while they have recently divorced, they’re still living together in the same house. my friend is working at her desk in the room where i sit talking to her tween daughter, a dream daughter who doesn’t exist in the waking world. i say to the daughter, “i need to figure out how to keep less clutter,” and my friend suddenly blurts, “you can start by getting rid of all those old half-finished needlepoints from your childhood that are lying around everywhere.” she says this as if they have been lying around her house annoying her. i had not been speaking to her, and her comment strikes me as harsh. i have a significant emotional attachment to these needlepoints, and i have been thinking that maybe i’ll finish them one of these days. it’s unclear if they are needlepoints that i started and never finished or if my mom started them and i now want to finish them. i only see one partially completed needlepoint in the dream. the image is a simple line drawing of a white girl with brown hair. it's my coloring, but there's no feature resemblance. some of the hair has been stitched in, but the stitching of the face, body, and background has yet to be completed.
an important note to contextualize this last dream: for several years when i was a tween and a bit younger, my mom owned a needlepoint store. we had framed needlepoint canvases and needlepointed pillows throughout the house. my mom tried to get me on board with needlepointing, but i wasn’t interested, and started one or two projects out of a sense of duty, but never finished them. this is one of the many ways that i felt like i disappointed my mom growing up.
now if you’re expecting me to tell you what i think these dreams mean, then i’m sorry. because i’m going to leave you hanging. i have lot of thoughts about them, many layers deep, that i will explore creatively. some of that will likely show up here in future mailings. and i hope to build my own version of “just before the bomb went off" - because how could i not?
i do think it’s abundantly clear, though, how deeply the quilts and book impacted me, melding with my own memories of childhood and textile arts to bring potent emotions and personal symbolism to the surface. and while i have much to process about my dream response, the overall sense i have of it is positive. healing. that is the power of art.