Preface: Convolute

Heavenly Blanket.jpg
 

Chapter 1: Witness

[1] Michael Cooper, “New York Police Will Start Using Deadlier Bullets,” The New York Times, July 9, 1998. James D. Walsh, “The Bullet, the Cop, the Boy,” New York, June 14, 2017.

Anders Warén, Swedish Museum of Natural History

Anders Warén, Swedish Museum of Natural History

 

Chapter 3: Extraction

 

[3] Dah iisl’ó Bizaad was installed in the Hear My Voice: Native American Art of the Past and Present exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond, Virginia: August 19, 2017-November 26, 2017). The quotes by Begay here accompany her blanket. Listen to Begay discuss Germantown textiles:

 

[4] “eyeDazzler,” Dir. by Will Wilson and Dylan McLaughlin, 2012. 

[6] “Diabetes Burden Strap, DNA Mircroarray Analysis,” 2008. 

[7] “My First Baby Belt,” 2007. 

[10] In an interview with Arizona Public Media in 2016, Ted mentions that his grandmother “had grown up with” Mark Bedell, and the “story goes that Kit Carson gave this blanket to Mark Bedell.” “The Navajo Blanket” Arizona Public Media (June 21, 2016).

[16] “Duck and Cover” by Archer Productions (1951). 

Chapter 4: Security

[2] Morrigan McCarthy, “Harvey in Pictures,” The New York Times, August 27, 2017. The specific photo I refer to is by Edmund D. Fountain

Humane-Restraint-Blanket.jpg

[11] “Humane Restraint HSB-100 Suicide Safety Blanket,” American Detention Supplies, 2017.

 

[12] Project Linus

[16] Interview with Catherine Sweeney from NewsOK, “Oklahomans develop blanket to protect youngsters in tornadoes or shootings,” June 7, 2014, accessed June 2017. 

[18]

[21] 

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

 Chapter 5: Cover

Star Quilt with “NO KXL” made by DeVon Bursheim

From Indigenous Environmental Network

From Indigenous Environmental Network

[6] See maps created by Jennifer Veilleux and her team, posted on High Country News (November 5, 2016).

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[9] Dignity 

[13] Giles R. Wright’s written statement offers a truncated portion of this keynote address—a more detailed critique of Hidden in Plain View—from June 4, 2001 at the Underground Railroad Day at the Camden County Historical Society. Wright died in 2009.

[14] “Unraveling the Myth of Quilts and the Underground Railroad.”

[15] Given this chapter’s focus, my own commitments and knowledge-base, and the accelerations and propulsions of Blanket more generally, I must leave an in-depth engagement with the rich histories and ongoing practices of African-American quilting to others—especially to those whose memories and forms of inheritance belong to the legacies of this extraordinary practice. My understanding and knowledge have been instrumentally shaped by contemporary quilters like Dr. Joan M.E. Gaither and Dr. Riché Richardson; and their work deserves its own scholarly treatment. I want to thank Professor Richardson, especially, for inviting me to her studio in 2005-2006 to view some of her exquisite quilts, and for teaching me, both in and outside the classroom, about quilts as collective memory, as forms of embodiment. 

Patty Elwin Davis

Patty Elwin Davis

[19] “Live Free or Die” is in the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American History & Culture (Baltimore, Maryland) collections.

 

Chapter 6: Carriers

[2] Blanket Stories: Western Door, Salt Stacks, Three Sisters (2017)

[3] Inara Verzemnieks, "Marie Watt: Blanket Stories," The Oregonian (April 2007).

[4] Blanket Stories: Transportation Object, Generous Ones, Trek (2014).

[5] Photo archived at the Royal British Columbia Museum and Archives. Marie Watt includes the photo below the image of Witness, here.

[7] Greg Kucera Gallery

[8] Companion Species (Listening) 2017