Learning How to Pick Blackberries
Exhibited in the RISD Textiles Senior Show (2025) and RISD Senior Invitational (2025)2025
My quilt Learning to Pick Blackberries is an exploration of a memory and lesson over time. Over the previous summer I had the chance to pick wild blackberries and develop this relationship of understanding. To pick blackberries one has to be gentle and thoughtful in their movements, otherwise thorns and brambles snag and tear, or feet tread too hard and they won’t return the following year. Each berry is earned through this mutual relationship of understanding.
This quilt is based on the relationships built to blackberries, and those I was foraging with, in the Summer. It began to be worked on in the Fall, had a moment of hibernation in the Winter while I was away, and then had final hand sewn additions in the Spring. A full year of slowly developing and growing.
Through the archiving of the natural dyes used within the quilt and photos of their becoming on the ‘back’ the quilt references its own development and growth. A way of trying to pay respect to the dyes and materials that contributed.