Quilts are functional pieces of art intended to keep people warm with each stitch and elaborate design. Ditch Projects, a contemporary art experience for community members and artists, partnered with the Springfield History Museum to construct the Quilt Bloc exhibit. This exhibit is intended to be a temporary space where people can view quilts as a tangible piece of history, preserving both the creative and aesthetic traditions of the people in the region.
The quilts range from the 1870s during Springfield’s early colonial settlements on the Kalapuya Ilihi land to the contemporary period. The exhibit is located at the site of the Booth-Kelly complex, a site built in the 1940s after the original Booth Kelly logging mill was destroyed in a fire in Wendling, Oregon, in 1946.
Quilt Bloc is located behind a loading dock facility room at the old mill. To get inside the space, one must enter through the compound by going up a concrete hill. Taking a glance to the right, one can view the small black plaque advertisement of “Ditch Projects” overhanging an aged green door holding the gallery. The space has tall ceilings of exposed air conditioning units and wires, sounding off loud hums.
The quilts are spread out across the exhibit, ranging from fabrics that contain mismatched patterns, political statements and historical commemorations. At the center of the exhibit, the largest piece in the space known as the “Wendling Quilt” was created by Springfield women between the years of 1944-1947 who had husbands that worked in the mill. Each woman ingrained their family names into the quilt to commemorate their husbands who were drafted in 1942 during World War II.
Ivy Pavlak, a sophomore art student in Portland and an intern at Ditch Projects, said the quilts in the exhibit were created by both current and past community members. In the piece “Centennial Quilt (1885-1985),” volunteers donated a combined time of 3,000 hours between the years of 1984-1985 to form a quilt honoring the hundred years of Springfield’s incorporation as a city.
According to the art exhibition’s catalog, the quilt makers designed a nostalgic image of wooden bridges, log cabins and farm animals, referencing the simple life of the early settlers. Surrounding the images are brown threaded news tidbits such as on March 15, 1907: “Railroad completed Springfield – Eugene connection with ‘steel bridge.’” The piece honors the legacy of the mill and how the city itself gained its name through the natural fields and springs of the land.
Quilts are a form of representation for people overlooked by mainstream narratives. Quilts were once viewed as a craft art, a form of visual art that was viewed as primitive and unoriginal to fine art critics. In Frances Andonopoulos’s piece “Mutual Aid for Mom of Three, 2022,” they challenge the notion of using quilts in the style of protest signs. Andonopoulous’s piece is strictly in textiles, allowing the viewer to form an internal dialogue. The quilt reads: “Mutual Aid Request: Sex worker mother out of work due to Covid in need of help. Her water heater broke and she has kids at home.” Andonopoulos also inserts the described women’s Venmo and Cash App accounts to assist her.
Andonopoulos uses their piece as a form of mutual aid. The quilt is designed to physically provide a family with comfort while the social media handles provide the function of donations. Quilts connect and represent different communities. However, in this day and age, the artist believes interpersonal exchanges are sparse and difficult to provide in-person support.
A piece in the exhibit that stood out to Pavlak was local artist Irene June’s piece, “The Crushing Weight of a Joyful Existence, 2022.” Pavlak said she is not an expert in quiltmaking but views this piece as an innovative form. What the artist demonstrated in this piece was the process of upcycling her grandmother’s colorful quilts and transforming them into a 3-dimensional object. The object is an abnormally shaped figure that has many spiked and rounded lines going in different directions.
Pavlok was interested in how the artist cut and stitched her attached material items onto a wax figure to gain power over the items weighing her down. This piece and the exhibit as a whole demonstrate how quilts allow the dead to carry on in one’s life through a creative conscience. It also explains how people carry the anxieties of their ancestors as long as they live.
“We can do so much with quilts,” Pavlak said. “It can be used for sculptures or to display crazy shapes. The primary aspect of quilts is for comfort and at least somebody in one’s family always made them. Quilts are an interesting art piece because they have significant meaning to those who pass them down.”
In this exhibit, each quilt has a different function that explains one’s emotional and social experiences. Quilts are a collective way community members and individuals can pass down their culture and interact with their past. This medium is a living and breathing form of communication.
Quilt Bloc is located within the Ditch Projects facility located at 303 S. 5th Avenue #165, Springfield, Oregon. The exhibit is open Friday through Sunday from 12-4 p.m. It is also available throughout the week by appointment. The exhibit is on display until March 20.
