Description
Join us for an opening reception to celebrate the Library's acquisition and exhibition of Jennifer Regan's Stitched Narratives. Quilting expert Pamela Weeks and educator Jane Regan will discuss the rise of art quilts and Jennifer Regan's role in the movement.
When author Jennifer Regan moved to Cambridge in the late 1980s, she had an artistic and feminist awakening. She had recently left behind a whirlwind life as the spouse of a prominent Buffalo politician. Newly divorced, middle aged, and in an unfamiliar city, Regan found artistic expression in quilt making or rather creating "stitched narratives," thematic stories sewn with symbolism and subversion. Reworking the traditional themes of American quilts, such as a focus on biblical stories, she created narratives negotiating femininity, marriage, motherhood, and society through a feminist lens. For some of her pieces, Cambridge became a focal point - either directly inspiring her or serving as her subject. Regan created over 100 pieces between 1989 and 2006 and her stitched narratives can be found in the New England Quilt Museum and Burchfield Penny Art Center collections.
Pamela Weeks is the Binney Family Curator of the New England Quilt Museum. Author of the book Civil War Quilts and articles on quilt history, she lectures nationally on quilt-making and quilt history. Weeks uses quilts to tell stories of the Civil War, women's history, and industrial history.
Jane Regan is multimedia journalist and scholar who has taught journalism and media literacy at the university level and social studies and history at the high school level. Since Jennifer Regan's death, Jane has been working with institutions around the country to place her mother's artwork in their collections.
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