Politics.
Don’t stop reading! I promise this newsletter will not veer into policy debates or end with a fundraising request. Instead, I am thinking this month about the ways politics and elections have often inspired creativity. Our current Presidential election is certainly inspiring some impressive TikTok videos, but long before the internet, people have used creative ways to show their political leanings. The New England Quilt Museum currently has an exhibit called “Political Quilts and Textiles” with political quilts dating back to the 1800s. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston will be opening an exhibit entitled “Power of the People: Art and Democracy” on October 26th.
I have personally found my creative work to be a great way to explore my own feelings about politics. I began with my Victims Quilts series in 2016, making memorials for mass shooting victims. I then started an “Accidental Protest” series in 2017, that has allowed me to explore topics like racism, xenophobia, and sexism from the safety of my sewing table. This is nothing like committing something to cloth to get you to slow down and really consider what you think about a thorny topic. So, as yet another contentious election approaches, consider turning to the soft form of fabric to explore the hard topics of politics or to your medium of choice to exorcise your feelings about politics. You may feel powerless as the political rhetoric heats up, but your art is something that you can control.
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