Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

People are complicated. Love is not.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

We still have time to mess this up!

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

No one could have predicted…

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

This blog will pay for itself.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

You are here: Home / Medium Cool / Medium Cool – National Women’s Day – Contributions to Culture and Art

Medium Cool – National Women’s Day – Contributions to Culture and Art

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Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

Tonight on Medium Cool – in honor of National Women’s Day on March 8 – can we celebrate the creativity of women and their contributions to culture and art?

We can come at this from all sorts of directions.

  • Whether women’s contributions to culture and art are erased in the same way contributions by anyone other than “the right kind of white men” have often been erased, for instance.
  • We can talk about all the women who had to hide behind male pseudonyms, and about how that is changing.
  • We can talk about the various female writers, directors, actors, musicians.  Artists, painters, sculptors.  Performers, singers, dancers, choreographers.  Writers, editors, poets, playwrights. Photographers and designers.  And more the I haven’t named.
  • We can talk about how women connect with other women through fabric art.  Knitting, tatting, crocheting, quilting…
  • We can talk about the role of women in passing down culture and tradition through generations.
  • We can talk about women who teach us about culture.
  • We can post links to interesting discussions of culture by and about women.
  • We can post links to works of art – in any genre – created by women.
  • We have all sorts of incredibly talented women right here on Balloon Juice.  Don’t be shy – link to your own creations!
  • Hell, this is Balloon Juice; we can even fight about the use of the word creatives.

Let’s get started!

Update: If this topic isn’t of interest, feel free to consider this one an open thread for all things culture related.

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  • AM in NC
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    95Comments

    5. 5.

      Steve in the ATL

      @Baud: so it’s based on the Lady Gaga song?  And yet somehow no one has made a movie based on Barry Manilow’s “at the copa”?  What a twisted world we live in.

      @Omnes Omnibus: math is a liberal art. You can do it!

      Reply
    10. 10.

      Suzanne

      One sub genre I find interesting is the creativity shown in the “domestic arts” by women who had serious resource constraints. Quilting, for example, was a way to use scrap fabric, and now is essentially graphic design.

      Don’t get me started on the dichotomy that “(white) men make art, women and indigenous people make crafts”.

      Reply
    13. 13.

      Another Scott

      There was a story on Marketplace (I think it was) late last week on Barnes and Noble expanding again after nearly going under. It was mentioned that book sales were the highest on record last year, and another tidbit mentioned that women buy many more books than men…

      Harriet Evans comment at TheBookseller.com:

      Women over 45 are the ones buying hardbacks as presents and tickets for festivals. The ones doing the weekly shop and seeing books in supermarkets, queuing up at WHSmith at the airport with paperbacks under their arms. They are the sandwich generation, caring for parents and children and doing the lion’s share of homeschooling and housework during the pandemic whilst holding down jobs, still finding time to be curious, read other people’s stories. They are setting up social media accounts to discuss books they love, buying books for grandchildren, visiting libraries and joining book clubs. (There are many book clubs.)

      Publishing and bookselling both need to normalise and celebrate the vast diversity of women over 45. I don’t know another audience more ignored by the media and publishing relative to its importance in sales. In the wider world it’s wild to me how little effort is made to actually understand the demographic’s vastness and subtleties. E-books give readers choice: for all that I remain a committed consumer of print books and bookshops it’s not so long ago that in the largest bookshop in London I was seeing my books shelved round the corner in Romance. I’m used to this, but they were alongside Rose Tremain and Barbara Trapido (yes seriously), though Sebastian Faulks, David Nicholls and Ian McEwan, all authors of intensely romantic novels, had mysteriously managed to make it onto the Fiction shelves at the centre of the shop. This has since been rectified but it speaks to the mindset of some gatekeepers.

      The largest publishing houses are opening offices all over the country and conversations are changing all the time, so hopefully some of these attitudes will change: in my years as an editor I never once went to a prison in Rochester, a bookclub in Staffordshire, a library in Middlesbrough or a superstore in Dumfries. As an author I have, and meeting readers is without doubt my favourite part of the job. They know everything. They have opinions on everything. They have buried loved ones, worked double jobs, know you’re wrong about wristwatches in 1942 and they’ve read everything under the sun, from Ann Cleeves to The Girl with the Louding Voice via Raynor Winn and Noel Streatfeild. Of course most of the people I meet at book events are women over 45.

      Only recently have I started to see the correlation between readers and authors and how we patronise women’s choices in both reading and in what they write. I have a degree in Classical Studies, I’ve edited and published several No. 1 bestsellers, written thirteen bestselling novels, sold a million copies, won a prize and been a Richard and Judy Book Club selection – twice. I’ve also homeschooled a 10 and 5 year old and survived, just. I’ll give you my opinion about literally anything, but I’m never asked for it. Yet two of the most interesting, informed interviews about my books have been with those who celebrate and love fiction by women and those readers over 45. Firstly with the excellent blogger Clare Reynolds of Years of Reading Selfishly, secondly the times I’ve been interviewed by Richard and Judy for the WHSmith Book Club. Their questions were challenging, intelligent, well-researched, absolutely anything but patronising. Both understand their market. They know their market doesn’t want to be talked down to. That this market wants new, exciting worlds.

      (More at the link.)

      What industry can ignore most of their customers and thrive??

      Diversity is always a good thing, and over half of the population (women) being ignored for too long is holding us all back.

      Cheers,
      Scott.

      Reply
    17. 17.

      Suzanne

      @Another Scott:

      What industry can ignore most of their customers and thrive?? 

      The women’s clothing industry has been ignoring the literal majority of women in this country of decades because they’re over a size 14. Mind-blowing but true.

      Reply
    26. 26.

      Tim

      @Omnes Omnibus: not linking but at the Dylan tribute when she bobbled “Hard Rain”, begged forgiveness like a child, and then just finished the job like a champ: realest and truest Live Moment ever. We all mess up. Just be Patti and finish the song. Actually, just be Patti always. G’night.

      Reply
    28. 28.

      Wyatt Salamanca

      When it comes to literature, I love these two short stories and find these passages quite moving

      A White Heron by Sarah Orne Jewett

        There was the huge tree asleep yet in the paling moonlight, and small and silly Sylvia began with utmost bravery to mount to the top of it, with tingling, eager blood coursing the channels of her whole frame, with her bare feet and fingers, that pinched and held like bird’s claws to the monstrous ladder reaching up, up, almost to the sky itself. First she must mount the white oak tree that grew alongside, where she was almost lost among the dark branches and the green leaves heavy and wet with dew; a bird fluttered off its nest, and a red squirrel ran to and fro and scolded pettishly at the harmless housebreaker. Sylvia felt her way easily. She had often climbed there, and knew that higher still one of the oak’s upper branches chafed against the pine trunk, just where its lower boughs were set close together. There, when she made the dangerous pass from one tree to the other, the great enterprise would really begin.

      She crept out along the swaying oak limb at last, and took the daring step across into the old pine-tree. The way was harder than she thought; she must reach far and hold fast, the sharp dry twigs caught and held her and scratched her like angry talons, the pitch made her thin little fingers clumsy and stiff as she went round and round the tree’s great stem, higher and higher upward. The sparrows and robins in the woods below were beginning to wake and twitter to the dawn, yet it seemed much lighter there aloft in the pine-tree, and the child knew she must hurry if her project were to be of any use.

      The tree seemed to lengthen itself out as she went up, and to reach farther and farther upward. It was like a great main-mast to the voyaging earth; it must truly have been amazed that morning through all its ponderous frame as it felt this determined spark of human spirit wending its way from higher branch to branch. Who knows how steadily the least twigs held themselves to advantage this light, weak creature on her way! The old pine must have loved his new dependent. More than all the hawks, and bats, and moths, and even the sweet voiced thrushes, was the brave, beating heart of the solitary gray-eyed child. And the tree stood still and frowned away the winds that June morning while the dawn grew bright in the east.

      Sylvia’s face was like a pale star, if one had seen it from the ground, when the last thorny bough was past, and she stood trembling and tired but wholly triumphant, high in the tree-top. Yes, there was the sea with the dawning sun making a golden dazzle over it, and toward that glorious east flew two hawks with slow-moving pinions. How low they looked in the air from that height when one had only seen them before far up, and dark against the blue sky. Their gray feathers were as soft as moths; they seemed only a little way from the tree, and Sylvia felt as if she too could go flying away among the clouds. Westward, the woodlands and farms reached miles and miles into the distance; here and there were church steeples, and white villages, truly it was a vast and awesome world

      The birds sang louder and louder. At last the sun came up bewilderingly bright. Sylvia could see the white sails of ships out at sea, and the clouds that were purple and rose-colored and yellow at first began to fade away.

      http://www.sarahornejewett.org/soj/awh/heron.htm

      Paul’s Case by Willa Cather

      When Paul arrived in Newark he got off the train and took another cab, directing the driver to follow the Pennsylvania tracks out of the town. The snow lay heavy on the roadways and had drifted deep in the open fields. Only here and there the dead grass or dried weed stalks projected, singularly black, above it. Once well into the country, Paul dismissed the carriage and walked, floundering along the tracks, his mind a medley of irrelevant things. He seemed to hold in his brain an actual picture of everything he had seen that morning. He remembered every feature of both his drivers, of the toothless old woman from whom he had bought the red flowers in his coat, the agent from whom he had got his ticket, and all of his fellow passengers on the ferry. His mind, unable to cope with vital matters near at hand, worked feverishly and deftly at sorting and grouping these images. They made for him a part of the ugliness of the world, of the ache in his head, and the bitter burning on his tongue. He stooped and put a handful of snow into his mouth as he walked, but that, too, seemed hot. When he reached a little hillside, where the tracks ran through a cut some twenty feet below him, he stopped and sat down.

      The carnations in his coat were drooping with the cold, he noticed, their red glory all over. It occurred to him that all the flowers he had seen in the glass cases that first night must have gone the same way, long before this. It was only one splendid breath they had, in spite of their brave mockery at the winter outside the glass; and it was a losing game in the end, it seemed, this revolt against the homilies by which the world is run. Paul took one of the blossoms carefully from his coat and scooped a little hole in the snow, where he covered it up. Then he dozed awhile, from his weak condition, seemingly insensible to the cold.

      The sound of an approaching train awoke him, and he started to his feet, remembering only his resolution, and afraid lest he should be too late. He stood watching the approaching locomotive, his teeth chattering, his lips drawn away from them in a frightened smile; once or twice he glanced nervously sidewise, as though he were being watched. When the right moment came, he jumped. As he fell, the folly of his haste occurred to him with merciless clearness, the vastness of what he had left undone. There flashed through his brain, clearer than ever before, the blue of Adriatic water, the yellow of Algerian sands.

      He felt something strike his chest, and that his body was being thrown swiftly through the air, on and on, immeasurably far and fast, while his limbs were gently relaxed. Then, because the picture-making mechanism was crushed, the disturbing visions flashed into black, and Paul dropped back into the immense design of things.

       

      https://www.gutenberg.org/files/346/346-h/346-h.htm

      Reply
    30. 30.

      WaterGirl

      @Omnes Omnibus: She does a great job on that song!  I would be tripping myself with that outfit, however.

      I don’t remember her looking like that – have her looks changed or did I just have the wrong impression of her style before?

      Reply
    31. 31.

      ruemara

      I just did an interview for the Indie AF podcast about being a woman in podcasting, this morning. The biggest takeaway that I hope I conveyed is the people who are willing to listen & enjoy our work – say something. Share it. Compliment us with a good review. We hear so much criticism and outright hatreds of our presence, we get so little support to even create our own things – so few people giving us our props. I can definitely attest to this.

       

      Anyway, I did a dramatic reading for a friend’s birthday of an Edward Gorey cartoon. Feel free to enjoy. Or not, I’m not the boss of you.

      Reply
    37. 37.

      Brachiator

      @Suzanne:

      Don’t get me started on the dichotomy that “(white) men make art, women and indigenous people make crafts”.

      Reminds me of the canard that women cook, but only men are chefs.

      Reply
    39. 39.

      Wyatt Salamanca

      I believe these five women painters have been criminally underrated and underappreciated and deserve significantly greater recognition than they’ve received, so here’s my modest effort to get them more recognition.

      Hilma af Klint

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWtB4svuK4s&t=2s

       

      Leonora Carrington

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7iQG9oH8P8

       

      Kay Sage

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUI01NdRZQc

       

      Dorothea Tanning

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YrohEuINOw

       

      Remedios Varo

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIp0tWE_Q28

      Reply
    41. 41.

      Omnes Omnibus

      @WaterGirl: Garbage is a band formed by three producer/musicians* from Wisconsin and singer Shirley Manson, a fierce redhead from Scotland.  Screaming Females are a band from NJ fronted by Marissa Paternoster, the woman shredding the guitar.

      *Among other things, Butch Vig, the drummer, produced Nirvana’s Nevermind.

      Reply
    43. 43.

      wonkie

      @Another Scott: I’m an author. I think the biggest market for books is older women. I think there is also a market for books with younger women looking for strong female leads in adventure and sex, but mostly it’s older women.

      Reply
    45. 45.

      kalakal

      Mary Ann Evans aka George Elliot

      Alice Bradley Sheldon aka James Tiptree Jr

      “A male name seemed like good camouflage. I had the feeling that a man would slip by less observed. I’ve had too many experiences in my life of being the first woman in some damned occupation”

      Reply
    48. 48.

      dibert dogbert

      My mom must have been grooming me.

      She taught me how to water color, crochet, sew button holes

      Reply
    51. 51.

      Brachiator

      I have always been interested in discovering the stories rarely told about women and people of color. One of the best was the 1981 BBC series Tenko, which ran for three seasons

      A group of British, Dutch, and Australian women are taken by the Japanese as prisoners of war after the fall of Singapore in 1942 and held in an internment camp on a Japanese-occupied island between Singapore and Australia.

      Great cast, featuring Ann Bell and Louise Jameson.

      Another film that comes to mind is Sandakan Number 8, about a Japanese “comfort woman” during WW2. The movie was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for 1975. It was also a commercial success. I found it to be very sad, but also very moving.

      Reply
    52. 52.

      Wyatt Salamanca

      Congratulations to Joni Mitchell for receiving the Gershwin Prize!

       

      Twisted

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Vmq-DHQRF4

       

      Chelsea Morning

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWDyA4S-geg

       

      Big Yellow Taxi

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94bdMSCdw20

       

      And some other great female performances

       

      Sandy Denny Who Knows Where the Time Goes

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oBMDcLf6WA

       

      Laura Nyro Wedding Bell Blues

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvKzCspqGgQ

       

      Laura Nyro Stoney End

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6diadP-g_7s

      Reply
    54. 54.

      Steeplejack

      Tillie Olsen (1912-2007) wrote a very good book about the problems faced by women writers.

      Olsen’s non-fiction volume, titled Silences, published in 1978, presented an analysis of authors’ silent periods, including writer’s blocks, unpublished work, and the problems that working-class writers, and women in particular, have in finding the time to concentrate on their art. One of her observations was that prior to the late 20th century, all the great women writers in Western literature either had no children or had full-time housekeepers to raise the children.

      Reply
    56. 56.

      UncleEbeneezer

      I’ve recently been obsessed with Elena Pinderhughes the flautist in Christian Scott aTunde Adjua’s amazing jazz band.  It’s been really cool seeing more and more women featured in prominent jazz bands, which for many years were almost all men.  You can check out her incredible solo (around the 2 minute mark) on New Heroes and on Ruler Rebel (also around the 2 min mark).

      Reply
    62. 62.

      citizen dave

      Artist Laurie Lipton.  I’ve been getting youtube recommendations of various artists’ works lately, and bit on this one.  An extraordinary artist and has some things to say about the manipulation of us all (at least in the first world) in her recent work.  Still alive and producing very interesting art.  Also, if you like disturbing art she’s done that too.
      The Bewitching Art of Laurie Lipton
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrLrWBI5KfA

      I will be investigating further…

      Reply
    65. 65.

      Splitting Image

      Here is an interview with Cathy Guisewite, from after she ended the Cathy strip in 2010. She touches on how she got started and on being one of the few women in the industry at the time.

      One thing mentioned in the interview that I think would get a few people’s dander up is that the difficulty marketing the strip at the beginning came from the fact that most strips were designed to appeal to everybody, but that a strip by a woman about women would “obviously” have a niche audience.

      Touching on this afternoon’s thread, Charlie Schulz was an early fan of hers. She asked him how long it would take to stop fearing that she’d wake up one morning and discover that everyone hated the strip, all of the papers had canceled it, and it would all be over. “Ten years,” he told her.

      Cathy is high on my list of strips that I would like to see collected properly. There are a lot of strips, especially from the early days, which have never been collected in paperback.

      Reply
    68. 68.

      UncleEbeneezer

      @citizen dave: You’re welcome.  Glad you like it.  The whole band is ridiculously talented.  I’ve been a fan since he was just “Christian Scott” (2015 or so) but we finally got to see them live, at the Bowl last Summer and they just killed it!  Her chops are amazing and she has great tone/feel too.

      Reply
    69. 69.

      Sure Lurkalot

      Late late…I recently finished Pandora’s Jar, by Natalie Haynes, about women in Greek myths. I have a masters in classics and didn’t always buy her takes, but she incorporates art, contemporary media and the different versions among ancient sources. It’s a great exploration of women’s motivations and a society’s misogyny from passion and fear. 10 women, including Helen, Medea, Eurydice….

      Reply
    70. 70.

      citizen dave

      I will check more out–been listening to quite a bit of jazz these last few years–and the XM Jazz channel.

      PJ Harvey is my favorite–here’s a cool performance of Working for the Man, apparently the first performance in 21 years since it was a new song on the awesome To Bring You My Love album.  2016, PJ Harvey in France: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2wirccKaOo

      Reply
    74. 74.

      raven

      Composing a Life

       

      Mary Catherine Bateson has been called “one of the most original and important thinkers of our time” (Deborah Tannen). Grove Press is pleased to reissue Bateson’s deeply satisfying treatise on the improvisational lives of five extraordinary women. Using their personal stories as her framework, Dr. Bateson delves into the creative potential of the complex lives we live today, where ambitions are constantly refocused on new goals and possibilities. With balanced sympathy and a candid approach to what makes these women inspiring, examples of the newly fluid movement of adaptation—their relationships with spouses, children, and friends, their ever-evolving work, and their gender—Bateson shows us that life itself is a creative process.

      Reply
    75. 75.

      raven

      You Don’t Belong Here

      Elizabeth Becker

      The long-buried story of three extraordinary female journalists who permanently shattered the barriers to women covering war.   Kate Webb, an Australian iconoclast, Catherine Leroy, a French daredevil photographer, and Frances FitzGerald, a blue-blood American intellectual, arrived in Vietnam with starkly different life experiences but one shared purpose: to report on the most consequential story of the decade. At a time when women were considered unfit to be foreign reporters, Frankie, Catherine, and Kate   challenged the rules imposed on them by the military, ignored the belittlement of their male peers, and ultimately altered the craft of war reportage for generations.

      Reply
    77. 77.

      raven

      @Omnes Omnibus:

      My friend from Madison is a co-author.

       

      In Supreme Bias, Christina L. Boyd, Paul M. Collins, Jr., and Lori A. Ringhand, present for the first time a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics of race and gender at the Supreme Court confirmation hearings held before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Drawing on their deep knowledge of the confirmation hearings, as well as rich new qualitative and quantitative evidence, the authors highlight how the women and people of color who have sat before the Committee have faced a significantly different confirmation process than their white, male colleagues. Despite being among the most qualified and well-credentialed lawyers of their respective generations, female nominees and nominees of color face more skepticism of their professional competence, are subjected to stereotype-based questioning, and are more frequently interrupted and described in less positive terms by senators. In addition to revealing the disturbing extent to which race and gender bias exists even at the highest echelon of U.S. legal power, this book also provides concrete suggestions for how that bias can be reduced in the future.

      Reply
    78. 78.

      VFX Lurker

      Random thoughts on women writers…

      It may be years before I can read Margaret Storey’s works. A writer I love (Neil Gaiman, I think) once praised Margaret Storey’s Timothy and Two Witches (1974) and her other books. However, they’re out-of-print, and my local library does not have them. If I want to read them, they’ll be anywhere from $50-90 each. I’m curious about these books, but not curious enough to pay that price. I hope that modern eBooks will make it less likely for good books like this to go out-of-print.

      I recently listened to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959), read beautifully by Bernadette Dunne. Jackson did a great job in her portrayal of Eleanor Vance, a woman without hope, home or loving family. Eleanor’s profound isolation and loneliness rival any horror in that horrible Hill House. Bernadette Dunne delivers a first-rate performance. My library also has an audiobook adaptation of the same book performed by actor David Warner, so I’ll listen to that soon.

      Reply
    79. 79.

      Omnes Omnibus

      @raven: ​
        God, Catherine Leroy. I haven’t heard that name in ages. She had to be weighted down to be heavy enough for her parachute to function properly when she jumped with the 173d.

      Reply
    84. 84.

      schrodingers_cat

      Women directors in Hindi cinema, Marathi theater

      Vijaya Mehta:  (Lifeline, Raosaheb, Smriti Chitre)

      Sai Paranjpye (Chasme Badoor, Sparsh)

      Of a more recent vintage:

      Meghana Gulzar (Raazi)

      Zoya Akhtar (Gully Boy and Made in Heaven)

      This from the top of my head.

      Reply
    86. 86.

      Manyakitty

      @Suzanne: follow that up with men are scientists, women are witches. That was my dissertation topic, had my PhD program not been a gigantic dumpster fire.

      Reply
    93. 93.

      The Oracle of Solace

      I’m currently in a play about the Harvard Computers, women employed at the Harvard Observatory in the late 19th and early 20th centuries whose analyses produced discoveries foundational to modern astronomy: Willamina Fleming, who catalogued the spectra of thousands of stars; Annie Jump Cannon, whose stellar classification system is still in use today; Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who discovered one of astronomy’s most important standard candles in the Cepheid variables. By sheer coincidence, I vlogged about some of these ladies last summer.

      For that matter, my own video creation—a mismatched-roommate situation comedy with history lectures—lives on YouTube.

      Reply
    94. 94.

      AM in NC

      @Another Scott:  I have a friend who is a romance author. Writes independent books and is a writer for Harlequin.  EVEN within romance, women over 45 are discounted.  My friend was told that nobody wants to read about women of a certain age falling love and having sexual relationships.  My friend was like, do you KNOW who reads your product?

      This is a big topic among romance writers, most of whom are not 26 years old. They know their audience, and they know that audience wants to read at least some stories about women in the second half of their lives.  But even many female editors have been captured by the belief that romance is only appropriate for women of child-bearing age. After that, women should be appropriately invisible, and certainly not be shown engaging in any kind of sexual behavior. Icky, amirite?

      Reply
    95. 95.

      donnah

      @Suzanne: My art is hooked wool rugs. Many similar comparisons to quilting, where women made do with old fabric to make useful items. The rug hookers used old wool garments cut up into strips and pulled with a hook through burlap or flour sacks in patterns or simply at random.

      Now women buy new fabric to make their quilts and whille many rug hookers use rescued wool garmets for their fabric, most of us buy wool off the bolt and dye it ourselves.

      The twist comes when we present our work as art rather than a handcraft. My work is detailed, tells a story, and takes hours of work to complete. And I present it as such, with shows in galleries and publication. I’m proud of my work and I want to be respected for it.

      Reply

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