Racines
The bellows are the lungs of the accordion, the instrument I used during my travels throughout Russia and Europe to keep my connection to my roots in Eunice, Louisiana, alive in my heart for those seventeen years. Visits home to my family, our home nestled among the rice fields featuring the most beautiful sunsets in the world, recharged my soul each time.
I love anatomical art, and was inspired by an artist on Instagram to embroider and bead this heart and lungs to be the bellows of an accordion. I worked on it during a family trip to Ireland. The original idea was to have the girl holding the accordion, but you wouldn’t see her face at all, and she’d be standing in front of flames and cypress knees.
My boyfriend, Toby Rodriguez, is a carpenter, butcher, and artist, very dedicated to preserving and promoting our culture here in Louisiana. When I spoke to him about my idea for the quilt, he said, “But you’re from the rice fields. Why would she have cypress knees behind her?” Then he sat down to draw a much lighter, more positive version of my idea.
I didn’t want too much of his beautiful and personal drawing lost in the quilting, so relied on different methods to create this quilt. The confetti of the sky, the English paper piecing of her face and chest, very basic patchwork for the field, and appliqué for the rice.
I like to put faux backings on art quilts, because things just get so messy back there, but sometimes I wind up having to cover some pretty cool stuff, like this negative of the hand. So even though it’s covered up on the quilt now, here’s a picture of what’s happening underneath the cover.
The fabrics here are again mostly inherited from my aunt, my grandmother, a distant cousin of my dad’s, and again the best friend I lost to gun violence. The fabric making up her dress is from my brother Joel’s Mardi Gras costume. The buttons used for those of the accordion are from my grandmother’s collection.
51 1/2” wide by 53 1/2” high
$3000
