writer | art historian | quilter
Public Library Quilts is an arts education project by art historian Dr Jess Bailey
London | England
Spring 2024
Art history programming for Yale’s centre for the study of British Art in London.
accessible & socially engaged art history programming
The People’s Quilting Bee
A lecture series organised by Dr Jess Bailey & Dr Sharbreon Plummer featuring art historians, artists, and educators telling stories of how quilts and quilters have shaped struggles for social justice and the art history of marginalised communities in North America. Tatter Blue Library, NYC, Autumn 2023.
Quilts are sturdy love.
I mostly quilt for people in my immediate community.
My primary work is as a university lecturer, writer, & researcher. However, quilting is an alternative form of record keeping and cultural legacy work. Quilts embody community care and kinship across generations. Often made for love, loss, protest, and reckoning, quilters hold a special place in the history of art.
PLQ is a space where I both make quilts and write about their histories. I take on projects from fundraisers to zine writing to lectures to essays to teaching for social initiatives.
I believe knowing where things come from has the power to shift systemic structures of harm. Quilt history is resplendent with defiance, practical change, vivid expression, and hope.
The Bug Quilt made for clothing designer and seamstress Amy Ward of Bug Clothing as an heirloom for her daughter and comprised entirely of scraps from her work.
