Good evening friends of Folded Poetry!

The unveiling of my most impactful work to date is just around the corner – This Saturday afternoon. I’m eager to share the inside scoop on Stitching Stories Reimagined.

This project has been in the mix for 3 years and it's finally ready for you to see up close and personal – And it is PERSONAL. 

During the pandemic, four women imprisoned in the Canary unit in Raleigh, North Carolina, turned to their creativity to generate purpose, meaning, and community building in the face of dreadful circumstances. Access to their loved ones in the outside world had been cut off as Covid swept through the facility.

Using some of the only creative tools available to them -- yarn and crochet hooks – they conceived a community art project: one crocheted square for each year of incarceration for those who participated. What resulted was the Stitching Stories Prison Awareness Quilt, which contains 751 squares.

Each participant’s section is differentiated by color, and ribbons were added to each respective section to represent a variety of adverse life experiences including death of a loved one while incarcerated, children left behind, mental health struggle, sexual abuse, and more.

In 2022, Arise Collective - a community non-profit which supports currently and formerly incarcerated women - was awarded a grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds and Mellon Foundations to bring the original quilt to life as an inclusive public art project. They hired a team of artists, including myself, to work with the original quilt artists to reimagine their creation into a commemorative art installation which will far outlive the original crocheted quilt. 

The sculptural quilt wall features an undulating Folded Poetry substrate with inlaid mosaics. 

Beyond simply representing the original crocheted quilt, this public art project is designed as an immersion intended to bring visitors into the experience of incarceration. 

In order to evoke feelings of confinement, we kept the interiors a medium gray and laid metal grate overhead which restricts access to the bright white ceiling and clerestory window above. A phone of the same style actually used in prison – when picked up – shares a welcome message from the original four quilt artists.

As part of my community engagement efforts for this project last fall, I held two separate workshops - one at a local Raleigh church with formerly incarcerated women, and one within the Canary Unit with currently incarcerated women.

The design challenge was to create a group sculpture project which met the guidelines for what was allowed to be taken in and out of prison. Think: no enclosed shapes, no pointy objects/attachments, no glue, etc.

 I designed cardboard shapes of the same style and proportion as the sculptural squares used in the final artwork, and – using yarn, markers and stickers – participants decorated and assembled their own squares.

During the workshops I shared my personal story of overcoming adversity through my car crash and traumatic brain injury, and encouraged the women to reflect and create based on what they considered to be their own “car crash”. 

I compiled all of the squares from these workshops into the following group sculpture. 

Words from this group sculpture surround portraits of the original Quilt artists on a mirror wall featured within the public art experience across from the Quilt sculpture.

The public art includes detailed infographics about the project, including statistics on mass incarceration, and the opportunity to listen to the original quilt artists’ stories in their own words.

The opening for this important project is THIS SATURDAY - see details below: 

The deadline to RSVP to be fed at this event has passed, but please show up anyway and enjoy this incredible public art experience. 

Do me a favor? Please share this newsletter with an art-loving friend or community member.

Thanks so much for following along on my creative journey - I’m looking forward to seeing you Saturday!