The intimate feelings of nostalgia and memory instill a sense of comfort in me, like the act of wrapping up in a quilt. Although nostalgia is usually a positive sensation, I fight with feelings of otherness among my family when I look back on my memories. As a child, I was unaware of the complex nature of my familial relationships. Now, I am able to look back at my memories and see the animosity within my family due to my existence as an unplanned and unwanted child. I had no concept of this until adulthood when I reflected on how my paternal family treated me. While not all my memories are negative, I am analyzing the parallels between positive and negative memories by utilizing family photos to create screen-printed images. Along with the family photos, I am using images of my home in Mississippi. The landscape of Mississippi has been a constant background within my family for generations, so I feel that I cannot separate myself from this place, similar to my familial ties.
Through these images of family and of Mississippi, I am creating paper quilts that dismantle the comfort of my own nostalgia. Through soft fabric and memories tied to the maker, quilts often instill a feeling of comfort and a sense of home in the person using them. I juxtapose this comfortable feeling of quilts with the rigid, inhospitable materiality of paper within my work. The screen-printed quilt blocks are created by cutting up and reassembling my prints. By creating these abstract quilt squares, I want to convey my own way of visualizing my trauma by breaking it down, making it easier to digest. In subverting the welcoming touch of quilts, I look to explore my sense of home as it relates to my memories of family and place.