A Re-introduction!

Defining The Patchwork Principle, and some updates!

Hello! Some quick updates for you:

• If you haven’t already, please respond to this quick survey! I’d like to learn more about you and your reading preferences to inform future posts.

• Current responses from this survey show that my readers have a keen interest in reading about outsider artists and craftspeople who keep endangered crafts alive (think lacemaking, woodworking, weavers, etc). You may nominate yourself, or anyone you’d like to here!

  

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

-Phillip Larkin

Hello, how would you like to proceed together? I’ve been writing to you in this newsletter for a few months now. My mind is racing with ideas and my little newsletter is quickly outgrowing all of my original expectations for it. Every rabbit hole I go down leads to another. I am feeling overwhelmed by the possibilities of what this could be, so I think it would be best to take some time to set some parameters for what The Patchwork Principle is.

---

The Patchwork Principle:

Through sharing our fragments, we build connections. Art is a bridge between individuals, communities, and generations, helping us to understand and empathize with each other’s stories and struggles to make sense of our past and present in order to conceive a shared vision of the future.

---

This is a massive endeavor for any artist. Before we grapple with grand universal themes, we must first stitch the patchwork within ourselves. We start from within and gradually expand outward.

We begin by seeking ourselves. All it really takes to be an artist is a deep and paralyzing sense of existential dread. "Who am I?" is the dreaded question at the core of the creative pursuit. What does it  mean to truly know yourself, your medium, and how to communicate that internal vision of yourself aesthetically? Seeking the self is a game of whack-a-mole; you hit yourself on the head and then you pop up somewhere else, completely unexpected. The artist is both the archer and the target to be hit. Both somehow a being that is so specific and simultaneously a kaleidoscope of everything it absorbs and reflects. The self has been elusive to all artist throughout history, but within our own contexts within the digital age, we are more fractured internally and communally than ever. My art is becoming deeply concerned in making sense of this fracturing, attempting to stitch together it’s disparate pieces into a cohesive whole.

I've been working under the title "Fauxbutch" for this newsletter until recently when I discovered the art of quilting and patchwork as a metaphor my art operates from. “Fauxbutch” is a handle I’ve used across my social media accounts for the past several years. In a way, it describes the fragments of two identities I hold: queer and man. It came up in a self-deprecating joke I once made about how I couldn’t use power tools. Now I can use power tools, but I think it still describes a fracture that has defined my life experience for better and worse. Allow me to list other fissures. I am southern by birth and gay by the grace of God. I have met my divinity but spent my childhood believing I was locked out of heaven. I am not very good at performing the role of an office worker but I have to construct this version of myself to survive. I find the global violence I witness from my phone’s screen every day paralyzing and disorienting, but I have to make peace with the small scope of the universe within my control. These are the fragments of myself. I’ve sewn the pieces together into my own constellation of patchwork, but the seams are still there. They fray and come apart sometimes, but I mend them.

I can mend what is within myself, but what about what is on the outside?

Where or who can I tether myself to when my family is also fractured, having no shared culture or belief system? Each successive generation cuts itself off from the last. Our life contexts vary so greatly from one generation to the next that we have no shared vision of what the world is, what good and evil are, or how to function under oppressive forces. Abject poverty and strife have defined the succession of unfortunate events that have defined my family’s dynamics for several generations on both sides. I come from people who lived in houses with dirt floors and lived on the dandelions from their front yard. They made quilts out of flour sacks, cobbling together odds and ends to make their lives whole.

I am interested in interrogating the line that divides what is called “art” from “craft.”

This division does not exist for any other reason than to keep certain groups marginalized and certain practices undervalued. Art is a transcendent experience, and there should be no cost or tuition to ascend.

This intrinsic urge to create connects us not only to each other but also to our ancestors, reaching back to the earliest humans who painted buffalo on the walls of caves. What if we viewed these primal acts of expression as the beginning of a continuum in which we all participate? What is the role of the ordinary person in the tapestry of art history? How would our perception of art change if we saw ourselves not just as bystanders but as active contributors alongside the likes of Picasso, Rothko, and Matisse? Institutions in power uphold an illusion of hierarchy, creating a sense of scarcity of the human genius. Yet, tapestries, quilts and ceramics made from unknown hands occupy the same residence as the “masters” of art history.

You and I are apart of art history. I hope to help you see yourself within it.

That is at the core of what I hope to communicate in my newsletter. The questions I have feel giant to me, but I have learned that I can answer some of these questions best by laying bare the minutiae of my life, in order to illustrate to you the transformative power of art. The voices we hear the most reflect cultural values that are not our own: opulence, perfectionism, materialism. If we do not subscribe to these beliefs, and if we do not create art as a means of producing economic value for the empire, it is unlikely that our voices will be heard or that our art will be seen. There is a general malaise in our culture that we are desperate to shed. We find our sense of self fractured in this digital landscape and forget that the creative pursuit is the soul's attempt to find itself, and to become whole.

Art, then, is not just external; it is deep, inner work. The expansiveness of our souls cannot be flattened to make art. I do not want to come here every week just to lift my own art up. I am weary from years of trying to do that. It is so tedious! I am here to share pieces of my story, and how art has brought me home to myself, as a hope that I can be a guiding light on your path.

A digital collage featuring text from “East of Eden” by Steinbeck, a quilt block I made and a quilt from The Met’s open access collection, and a drawing of my partner reading to me.

If art is to survive, it must tell the story of everyone.

We are often deterred from telling our own stories in art because they will likely be dismissed by institutions as saccharine. However, I have found that this is exactly where our collective power lies. If we use our art to carefully attend to what is most precious to us, and as a means of asserting our own virtues over the values of opulence, that is subversive. This kind of art holds immense power.

A quick update on The Dollhouse Project!

I have received a couple submissions by mail to the first prompt What's in the Attic! I am beginning to spin these submissions into a narrative for you. I’m dusting off the cobwebs and turning on the lights. I myself still do not know where our findings will lead us, but I am leaning into the unknown and allowing myself to be surprised!

I stumbled across this documentary on Louise Bourgeouis this week. I really enjoy the way that she explores the themes of memory, time, and the way she uses installations to explore the interplay between emotional states and physical space. It’s quite lengthy, but if you jump in around the 14 minute time stamp I think this might provide some inspiration for some themes we could explore together in the dollhouse.

Have a great week, y’all!

-Jeremy