Stitching Migrant Life: Barbara James’ Quilts
Living with the prospect of moving across international borders tends to make people wary of acquiring too many objects. Yet, making things can also be a way of weaving a moving ground of the materials of several homelands. Barbara James’ quilting is an example of this.
When I entered Barbara and Stephen’s California bungalow, I was surprised to find their home chock-full of furniture, do-dads, throw rugs and prints of well-known artists. Their moves to places as diverse as Vietnam, the Philippines, The USA, Uzbekistan, England and Germany did not include the kinds of social and economic continuities offered to employees of large companies, the military or the diplomatic corps. I knew they could not afford to move the contents of an entire home around the world- so this ranch home with its beige expanses of capacious furniture was out of sync with what I knew about their life and the proclivities of serial migrants generally. They explained that Steven’s employer provided this over-full house near the freeway during his 12 month-long consultancy; this was not their stuff. Or so it seemed. As I enjoyed a glass of wine, I noticed that amidst the neutral tones of the landlord’s possessions, there were patches of vibrant color. Quilts were scattered on chairs, the sofa where I sat- on a bed I could make out in another room.
Although the California sojourn was planned to be short-term, Barbara said when I inquired about them, she wanted to have some examples of her handiwork around her in this foreign place. The quilts are for her palpable manifestations of her life and she could not do without at least a few of them around her. They are remainders and reminders of places, people and ways of life she has left behind but which, thanks to the quilts, she could hold close to her. The quilts are a moving ground for a life space stitched of several terrains.
At a performance of MMTW artists for the Los Angeles Son of Semele Ensemble, Barbara used her quilts as ciphers for her storytelling. She recounted events and encounters, humorous and tragic events with reference to specific patches of fabric. She also explained how she collects pieces of fabric in the local shops as a way to get to know people and her new environment. Fabric-buying outings enabled her to get a sense of the prevalent aesthetic and styles: she doesn’t go out seeking specific fabrics or colors but certain swatches of cotton, linen or velvet catch her eye. She develops ideas for patterns and color schemes with what she finds. She is inspired by patterns others use in the place she is living. It’s not as thought she is seeking to “describe” the place or convey her own state of mind, in the manner of a diary entry; the process is more one of discovery and free association: of making do with what is available, rather in the fashion of site-specific art. Except, in this case, the collection of quilts witnesses her site-shifting.
In her performance in Los Angeles, Barbara interspersed information about the details of sewing, embroidering and patchwork of each piece with accounts of how the colors and shapes of individual pieces conveyed something about the way of life, the climate and the landscapes of the place she made each covering. But what the quilts “said” about the places was not simple or straightforward: I vividly recall the blue and green tones of a quilt she fashioned in Uzbekistan, and her explanation that its watery hues was a reminder of the water missing in that arid land. The fogs and chilly mists of London, she said, are also starting to appear in the pieces she is fashioning in California, recalling her other homes with fabrics found in the place she lives now. This forms of association between two landscapes distant to one another that find connection through her art and experience was of particular interest to me for I too had experienced the way a dry wind, a bright light, or a soft mist could lead me to meld different settings into a single tableau. In my book Moving Matters I wrote about a painting I made called “International Life” :
Images and letters, memories and reveries that make up one’s experience are ordered in succession to tell one’s story. In contrast, International Life evokes the tangle of words and images, facts and emotions, reminiscences and feelings that intermingle in the present in an internal conversation that is difficult to translate into narrative. The continuity of the subject is always more than can be said, one’s history more than a set of choices and deliberations. Evidence of who one is now, made up of pasts seemingly forgotten or left to the side, sometimes erupts into present consciousness; one might observe one’s own hand gesturing in a manner that brings some place of the past into the room uninvited, or a word said with an accent that adds to the meaning for oneself but for no one else who is present.
Barbara’s quilts surely include similar evidences for her. They incorporate fabrics found in places along her path, not so much indicated that she “saw” something as that she was a part of it and made something of it.
Barbara says that for her, quilting connects her not only to the places of her life, but to women though the ages who have practiced this art. Quilts are symbol of warmth and caring; quilting a craft that has practical applications. One does not just look at a quilt but uses it to keep warm. Might Barbara’s choice of media conveys something about her consistent engagement as someone who cares for the well-being of others? Trained as a nurse, Barbara has also worked as a massage therapist, and most recently, she’s founded organization that helps people make life transitions. The quilts are a palpable and practical example of a pervasive and ongoing effort to act for others - whether her three children and husband, or those beyond the family circle. Helping Barbara to unfold the clothes of her life she could use them to performed, I could imagine spending a cozy afternoon lounging on a sofa curled up in the soft bed covers with which Barbara composes her lifescape. Contemplating their colors and soft differences of texture, I felt connected to her self-conscious use of craft to develop relationships, to create accounts of places and to collect these as evidence of the threads that sew together an individual across great distances and dislocations, simultaneously stitching her singular life to that of other people.
