Michigan quilts: 150 years of a textile tradition

Michigan Quilts celebrates the 150th year of Michigan's statehood by focusing attention on quilt making, quilts, and quilters. Quilts have always represented prized family possessions, important family and community documents, and the strength and breadth of quilting as an art activity in the state.

Michigan Quilts: 150 Years of a Textile Tradition

MacDowell, Marsha

Fitzgerald, Ruth

Arts & Photography

MSU Museum

Stories in Thread: Hmong Pictorial Embroideries focuses on the research, documentation, and presentation of embroidered and appliquéd pictorial textiles produced by Michigan Hmong residents and their relatives in Thailand and Laos. These "story cloths" depict traditional tales, Hmong daily and ceremonial life, and the experiences of war, migration, and resettlement that the Hmong have recently endured. The publication includes a cassette tape of the traditional Hmong story "The Tiger and the Hunter," told in Hmong and English.

Stories in Thread: Hmong Pictorial Embroideries

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Crafts & Hobbies

Mary Schafer and Her Quilts provides an account of the quiltmaking history of nationally-recognized quilter, quilt educator, and pioneering quilt historian, Mary Schafer. Her quilts reflect a passion for historical accuracy, creative adaptations of traditional designs, and skilled quilt construction.

Mary Schafer and Her Quilts

Marston, Gwen

Cunningham, Joe

Marlinespikes and Monkey's Fists: Traditional Arts and Knot-Tying Skills of Maritime Workers explores the knot-tying traditions and artistry of maritime workers in the Great Lakes region. It contains a glossary of knot-tying terms, biographical sketches of fifteen knot-tyers, an 18-page essay describing various knot-tying customs such as decorating the workplace and personalizing tools, and experiences of the knot-tyers themselves: their careers, how they learn and pass on knot-tying techniques, and how they view the purpose and importance of the tradition.

Marlinespikes and Monkey's Fists: Traditional Arts and Knot-Tying Skills of Maritime Workers

Kozma, LuAnne Gaykowski

Gilmore, Janet C.

Martin, Jay C.

History & Criticism

Contemporary Great Lakes Pow Wow Regalia showcases the work of contemporary Native American Indian artists who make and wear pow wow dance regalia in the Great Lakes region. In addition to photographs taken by Minnie Wabanimkee, the publication contains a series of essays on dance and dance regalia and a glossary of terms by Cameron Wood, Charlotte Heth, Arnie Parish, Thurman Bear, Frances Vincent, and Marclay Crampton.

Contemporary Great Lakes Pow Wow Regalia: Nda Maamawigaami (Together We Dance)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Weavings of War: Fabrics of Memory accompanies a landmark traveling exhibit of textiles depicting the horrors of war, by women from Central and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and South Africa. Textile artists (mostly women) throughout the world have responded to the terror of 20th-century war by incorporating images of war into works produced with traditional methods: Hmong embroiderers created storycloths depicting the plight of unarmed refugees confronted with modern military might; Afghan rug weavers replaced traditional motifs with images of tanks, machine pistols and AK-47s; Peruvian appliqués picture soldiers beating peasants. These textiles encompass powerful contradictions: individual artistry versus community aesthetics; global versus local impacts of war; individual versus universal experience; and assumptions of folk arts as unchanging, rural,and complacent. Many of the artists still live in countries that are marked by recent conflict and some are refugees who have resettled in the United States. Weavings of War stands as an eloquent and powerful testimony of the impact of modern warfare in our world and the relevancy and resilience of folk arts in contemporary life. The exhibition provides an opportunity to examine our existing notions of not only traditional arts in general but also the role of traditional arts in cultures rent by armed conflict, social upheaval, and displacement. Among the contributors are curator Ariel Zeitlin Cooke, consulting curator/folklorist Marsha MacDowell, historian James Young, and folklorist Barbara Kirshenblatt- Gimblett.

Weavings of War: Fabrics of Memory

Cooke, Ariel Zeltin

With texts in both Spanish and English, Fiesta, Fe, y Cultura gives a brief history of the Detroit colonia Mexicana and the first comprehensive study of three Mexican-American religious fiestas in the Midwest: the Day of the Dead, the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and Los Posadas. The author draws on archival sources, field research, and oral interviews with Detroit's pioneering Mexican immigrants and their children.

Fiesta, Fe, y Cultura: Celebrations of Faith and Culture in Detroit's Colonia Mexicana

History

Laurie Kay Sommers

Americas

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