Worcester, MA
United States
This huge, colorful, emotion-packed story quilt was displayed at Worcester City Hall in 2019. “Unwoven Journeys” was also an integral part of the 2020 Worcester Center for Crafts exhibition, “Crafting a New Home: Refugee Artisans of Worcester.” A variety of RAW fiber artisans contributed the diverse quilt squares, each portraying an aspect of their refugee journeys from country of origin to refugee camps to resettlement in Worcester. Other newcomers to Worcester also joined in. The project was inspired and pulled together by fiber artist and quilter Susi Ryan, founder and head of the nonprofit “Sisters in Stitches Joined by the Cloth,” New England’s only quilt guild devoted to the documentation of African American family and communal heritages. The 2019 project by refugee artisans represents an expansion of SISJBTC’s purview toward the fiber arts and historical memories of forced migrants worldwide. Ryan writes that in 2019 RAW artisans met “bi-weekly for a period of four months at Saint Andrew’s Church in Worcester, MA. Despite the language barriers for most of the refugees… we discovered that our love for textiles brought us all closer together… As we worked on the quilt and put the pieces together we developed our own creative community, and safe haven. It visually depicts that ‘quilting is the catalyst that celebrates life.’” Ryan goes on to note that Bayda Asbridge and Lynn Simmons “graciously donated their art studio.” She reports that the quilt was displayed in a Worcester pop-up gallery in June 2019 with funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council; this was followed by the Worcester City Hall display and then the January-February 2020 “Crafting a New Home” exhibition at Worcester Center for Crafts. For more on Ryan’s own fiber art work about African and African American memory, heritage, and resilience see her essay “Cloth has Given Me a Voice”