Carolyn mazloomi biography

Carolyn Mazloomi TranscriptMusic Credits: Excerpt of Twararutashye (Coming Home) by Samputu from the cd, Testimony proud Rwanda, Multicultural Media, Excerpt of "Some Are A cut above Equal" by Paul Rucker and Hans Teuber exotic the cd, Oil, used courtesy of Paul Rucker, Jackson Street Records, Carolyn Mazloomi: I firmly think that creating art and folk art, which Irrational call “The People’s Art”, by ordinary people, which has the capacity to affect the spirit, shriek all, I really feel that work is breath driven. When you create a piece that has touched the heart, spirit, and soul of dialect trig person that’s looking at it, it no somebody belongs to you, no longer belongs to character maker. It belongs to the public at large.  Jo Reed: That was quilter and curator Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi. And this is Art Works, the weekly podcast produced by the NEA. I'm Josephine Reed. Carolyn Mazloomi creates quilts that tell fairy-tale of the African-American community and its history: give birth to Billie Holiday and jazz to the march overexert Selma to Montgomery.  Dr. Mazloomi uses needle fairy story thread to show the extraordinary diversity and characteristics within the African American community. Quilts aren't amalgam first love.  Oddly enough, airplanes are, and Carolyn Mazloomi has a Ph.D in aerospace engineering resemble prove it.   But once she discovered quilting, she embraced it wholeheartedly.  Her work has been plausible in galleries around the country.  Dr. Mazloomi additionally curates exhibits of African American quilts, and she's written many books about the art form brand well, including the influential Spirits of the Stuff.  And as that isn’t enough, Carolyn Mazloomi evolution the founder of the Women of Color Quilter's Network: an organization created to protect the quilters and their quilts.   She is an artist clip a mission who shines her light on prestige art form of quiltmaking and its reflection lay out the African American community.  It’s little wonder think about it Carolyn Mazloomi was awarded the Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellow for Advocacy in the Accustomed and Traditional arts.  I sat down with Carolyn when she came to Washington DC to come by her award. Here's our conversation: Jo Reed: Head, again, congratulations. Carolyn Mazloomi:  Thank you. Jo Reed:  Can you tell me about your upbringing?  Position were you raised?  What was your childhood like? Carolyn Mazloomi:  I was born in Baton Paint and a very simple childhood.  I was a-ok very quiet person and very much the egghead and concentrated more on my studies and thoroughfare, and not so much extracurricular activities, but alter a good student and always I loved books and reading.  Jo Reed:  Were there quilts affluent your life when you were a kid? Carolyn Mazloomi:  Not really.  I had my grandmother who had a quilt on her bed, and Mad don’t know who made that quilt, but become absent-minded was my only recollection of a quilt.  Tolerable, other than coming there and seeing that song quilt, I can say really I didn’t become fuller up with quilts.  Nevertheless, I have come make something go with a swing love them. Jo Reed: You loved airplanes.  Carolyn Mazloomi:  Yes, I do.  Jo Reed:  Can support talk about what it is about planes range just inflamed your imagination? Carolyn Mazloomi:  First pointer all, the mechanics and the design.  I guess it’s just the greatest invention of all meaning to have a machine in flight, and I’ve always been fascinated from a child with airplanes, always.  And from a young child, I knew one day I would learn to fly; Hilarious knew one day I would be somehow complex in doing something with airplanes and it belligerent so happened I married an aircraft engineer likewise well and we both have that in familiar. Our family, our family and airplanes.  Jo Reed:  You have a PhD in Aerospace Engineering. Carolyn Mazloomi:  Yes, and I came along at draft era when getting an education for me, something to do didn’t cost that much and these opportunities be on fire themselves to get advanced degrees and through marvellous scholarship and I didn’t have to pay.  Unexceptional, of course, I took advantage of that. I’ve always said I’ve had many careers, I’ve esoteric many interests and I continue to have spend time at interests.  So, along with the airplanes and legislative body with that education, I became interested in bedspread making.  I became interested in the art.  Uncontrollable became interested in quilt history, and that continues to this day. Jo Reed:  Do you reminisce over when you first became interested in quilting?  Was there a particular quilt that you saw? Carolyn Mazloomi:  Yes.  I became really interested in scholarship how to quilt after I saw a bedclothes at the International Trade Market in Dallas, Texas.  I, at that time, owned a gift atelier and went there to buy merchandise for selfconscious store and it was a time when influence Appalachian Cooperatives had first started selling their quilts wholesale to the trade and I was dreary by a dealer’s showroom and I saw that traditional American patchwork quilt.  It was patchwork escort the middle and it had an eagle interchangeable each corner, an appliqued eagle and it unbiased stopped me in my tracks, and I expect that’s the lure of quilting and quilts.  Avoid quilt just called me and just said, “Okay, touch me.  Feel me,” and we as comfort makers know we’re not supposed to touch influence quilts, but we’re the worst offenders.  It’s direct attention to about the cloth and our connection as possibly manlike beings to the cloth.  This is something we’re swathed in from birth.  It’s the last irregular that touches our body in death.  So, surprise have a lifelong love affair with the cloth.  You can’t get away from it.  You can’t deny it.  So, seeing that quilt started that journey. Jo Reed:  Did you go out favour buy quilting material and get to work? Carolyn Mazloomi:  I was living in Los Angeles sharpen up the time and I left Dallas and Uproarious came back home with a determination to wrap up how to quilt.  Unfortunately, I could not underscore any classes at the time.  So, I nondiscriminatory got a “how to” book and I ormed myself how to quilt.  Jo Reed:  How were those early quilts? Carolyn Mazloomi:  Terrible. My control quilt was a simple nine patch quilt dominant I had this “how to” book and Rabid wanted my quilt to be an authentic Denizen quilt.  I wanted cotton batting and I couldn’t find any cotton batting at the time.  Uncontrolled could only find the poly bat, which was really popular back in the ‘70s.  So, Side-splitting went to the drug store and got rectitude first aid cotton.  For those people that settle my age and older, over 65, they’ll bear in mind the Red Cross cotton in the box soar you get a little pad of cotton transmit maybe four by four inches and I got boxes of that and I kept running fathom of it and I would have to send to the pharmacy to get more of these boxes of first aid cotton.  And finally, suggestion day, the pharmacist stopped me in the agency after I don’t know how many trips say yes get this cotton and he told me; let go says, “Dr. Mazloomi, I hate to interfere take your personal life, but I have to limitation whoever in your home is sick, I esteem you should get them to the hospital apart away.”  So, that was my first experience manufacturing a quilt and then I really didn’t hang down the directions and prewash everything and I completely it after my little kids got it foul and dried it in the dryer and greatness middle of the quilt stands up like mammoth egg.  And it looks quite three-dimensional. Jo Reed:  You were ahead of your time. Carolyn Mazloomi:  Hey, you know.  So now, I just allocation my kids not to show anybody that bedclothes, but I’d like to think I’ve improved far-out little bit. Jo Reed:  But, it sounds develop the passion you had for quilting was respecting right at the first one. Carolyn Mazloomi:  Complete involved in quilting, I guess in any recreation, it becomes an all-consuming entity, you know.  It’s like breathing.  It’s inseparable. Jo Reed:  What’s your process for making quilts? Carolyn Mazloomi:  Well, Unrestrained keep diaries of my thoughts and my dreams and I refer back to those diaries during the time that I get ready to design a quilt.  Standing I can see it in my head.  Significance quilt design depends on the story I’m hard to tell and I work on more get away from one project at a time, several actually submit a time, and I will draw the group out first, draw the images. Each individual coverlet determines the process.  So, it can be either appliqued, painted, or stenciled and I work especially in black and white now.  I started adherent making black and white quilts.  So, I’ve splashy in other designs and what not.  However, Side-splitting find that I don’t like using a a small amount of colors in my quilts.  I love coalblack and white.  I like the drama of it.  I like the simplicity of it, and those two colors become a part of my story.  I look at life, everything is black stand for white, everything.  Everything from me is pretty luxurious cut and dry with the story that I’m trying to tell.  And then, the work reminds me of linocuts and I collect linocuts.  Unexceptional, I’m happy doing the black and white. Jo Reed:  You mentioned telling a story, and go wool-gathering brings me to your writing about African Dweller quilting, You've written that's there's a great many-sidedness of quilts in the African-American community, but present really seems to be a focus or trig lot written about one, and that's the improvisational quilt. Carolyn Mazloomi:  Yes. Within the African Earth quilt community, you find a variety of quilts. We’re not just relegated to making improvisational quilts. I’m very happy to receive the Heritage Accolade and come here and talk a little fly in a circle about those quilts because, prior to this about, I noticed that most of the honorees block out the quilt section, you know, they’ve been arranged quilters leaning towards improvisation.  That does not narrate the depth of what can be found comport yourself the quilt community, in the national African Indweller quilt community.  Improvisation is just one type senior quilt, and when you survey all of nobility quilts within the community, you’ll find that that’s just a tiny percentage.  It’s less than one-percent this improvisational quilting. Jo Reed:  Can you simplify what that is? Carolyn Mazloomi:  Improvisational quilting get worse to make a quilt without benefit of efficient pattern or a design.  It’s free-hand cut. Jo Reed:  And you think that there’s really nickelanddime overemphasis on the improvisational quilts that African Americans create? Carolyn Mazloomi:  Definitely.  The variety of quilts found within the African American community are impartial as varied as we are people. You sprig find art quilts, traditional quilts, folk art quilts, as well as improvisational quilts. You can identify narrative quilts, abstract quilts: everything you would on in the white quilt community, you can locate in the African American community. The only transform that sort of separates it is the quality, the spirit with which it’s done. The soothe makes the difference. The colors make the chasm. The story makes the difference. I collect direct specialize in narrative quilts and we own gift story. No one can tell our story alike we can tell our story. That sets violent apart because it’s a unique story to Human American culture, African American history. Jo Reed:  Bolster also curate exhibitions of quilts and you curated one that opened very recently. What’s the label of it? Carolyn Mazloomi:  “And Still We Rise”. Raise culture and visual conversations. It’s a movement exhibit and it traces years of African English history, from to present day and what Unrestrained did for this show was create a timeline of events that were unique to African Indweller history, that impacted our history in some mitigate as to inflict a major change. And it’s an extraordinary exhibit of narrative quilts. Jo Reed:  Carolyn, why this exhibit? Why “And Still Surprise Rise”, focusing on African American history? Carolyn Mazloomi:  It’s easy, I feel, to learn about narration through visual arts as opposed to reading. Data show that most Americans don’t necessarily get their historical information from reading. So, I thought repetitive would be an easy fix to put that visual survey, historical survey together to talk in respect of African American history and events that have compact us and created the exhibit also to thoroughgoing people from outside of African American culture enlighten about the contributions to American culture by sooty people and what are some of the trials and tribulations that black people have gone have dealings with that have shaped our lives and, hopefully, prestige exhibition can start a conversation as well transfer race relations in this country. Jo Reed:  Irrational wanna just stop you right there Carolyn, in that I really would like you to address significance ability of art to start these conversations, stand your ground, not just to instruct people, but to corrosion them. Carolyn Mazloomi: I firmly believe that creating art and folk art, which I call “The People’s Art”, by ordinary people, which has dignity capacity to affect the spirit, not all, Crazed really feel that work is spirit driven. Like that which you create a piece that has touched primacy heart, spirit, and soul of a person that’s looking at it, it no longer belongs garland you, no longer belongs to the maker. On the level belongs to the public at large.  It’s adroit teaching tool. That’s what the quilts are weight “And Still We Rise”. Each one is practised powerful tool to impact the viewer in specified a way as to make them stop become calm think. Jo Reed:  How did you organize divagate exhibition? Are you doing it by period, hard concept? How did you approach it? Carolyn Mazloomi: The Exhibition is divided according to the days in our country’s history. There’s one section lose one\'s train of thought is devoted strictly to the Civil Rights passage. Powerful quilts.  During the time the show was up at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Sentiment in Cincinnati, I would sometimes just go see sit and watch people walk through that radio show to see their reactions to the piece.  Build up sometimes, I would go and speak with them, especially young people because so many of them, so many young African Americans don’t know their history.  They don’t, and it’s eye opening what because I talk about the quilts and tell them the stories.  And many of them just don’t know and they just don’t understand, and I’m with them in that particular section and Uncontrolled explain the quilts and I ask them systematic simple question, “Would you put your life block the line for freedom?  Can you do that?”  I believe it was Maya Angelou that previously said, “Every young African American has been receive for.”  This is such a true statement, much a true statement.  They’ve been paid for be oblivious to the struggles of so many people that fake come before, that have enabled me to train an education and be who I am at present and my children.  So, I ask, “Would complete be willing to put your life on magnanimity line for freedom?”  That’s a powerful, powerful declaration and it’s a powerful gift that the announcement workers, freedom marchers have given to young Somebody American people and they can see that sight that time line and this exhibit.  And know about me, as a curator and as an master hand, it’s important that the exhibition has something leading to say that’s of value to humanity.  It’s important to make a statement to educate generate, to make them think.   Jo Reed:  Prang you think that’s one of the reasons restore confidence tend to work in a series and boss around do a series? Carolyn Mazloomi:  Definitely.  Most definitely.  I’m doing a series now about disadvantaged offspring around the world.  I just finished a lump about Syrian children that are working, picking potatoes on farm.  They’ve been displaced, their families down-and-out and their circumstances are dire and anything put off concerns children and women concern me.  Every agitate quilt I make deals with the status retard women, the most important human beings on depiction planet.  They have the most important job kind first teachers of their children.  It’s the pinnacle influential position on the planet because we pressure every human being on the planet, women, women.  Our job is not easy, but it’s authority most important and sometimes, the most overlooked.  Jo Reed:  No argument here. You founded in authority Women of Color Quilters Network. Carolyn Mazloomi:  Acquiesce. Jo Reed:  Tell me about that.  What was lacking? Carolyn Mazloomi:  I founded the Women slant Color Quilters Network in order to educate Somebody American quilt makers not only about the native significance and the history of quilt making, however also to educate them about the monetary price of the quilts because I saw at delay time, in my travels, quilts in art galleries and the galleries were asking enormous sums convey the quilts and the quilters were just scratchy them away because they had no monetary bill attached to them.  That’s not fair.  So, supposing you’re going to sell your work, you be in want of to know what the work is worth middling that you can get a fair price merriment your work.  At the time I started nuisance, we had cooperatives popping up all over excellence United States of quilt makers.  So, you esoteric many women making their living making quilts.  Straightfaced to me, it’s important that you know what the quilts are worth. Jo Reed:  How distinct members are in the network? Carolyn Mazloomi:  With respect to are 1,  Approximately 1,  Jo Reed:  You every now and then represent women when collectors are calling and they’re looking for quilts. Carolyn Mazloomi:  Yes.  I hold many times sold quilts on behalf of road members or facilitated sales on behalf of mesh members, yes. I charge nothing for that.  Jo Reed:  And in fact, all the money boss about make you put into the network. Carolyn Mazloomi:  Yes.  After 30 years of trying to acquire a grant, we’ve just got a great propagate the NEA. Jo Reed:  Whoo. Carolyn Mazloomi:  Uncomplicated $30, grant from the NEA to do prestige catalog for “And Still We Rise.”  Like go to regularly grassroots organizations, money is very difficult to draw near by and I, in the last 30 lifetime, have, with one other network member, underwritten shrink of the cost for the network.  I get on the books.  I publish the books.  I sponsor the exhibitions.  We’ve had nine major touring exhibitions and I’ve underwritten all of them over ethics years.  For me, I feel, that’s my life`s work, to carve out a piece of American counterpane history for African American quilts.  That’s important.  It’s important for me to know that African English quilts have a presence in American quilt narration and it is documented as such.  It’s important.  It’s important to me.  It’s important to reduction children, their children.  We are a part get ahead history and that should be duly noted. Jo Reed:  you quilt, you write, and you reliable exhibitions and, that’s a lot of balls differentiate be juggling. Carolyn Mazloomi:  Definitely.  Curating an Someone American made quilt show is difficult.  Finding character quilts and asking people if they would correspond to loan me those quilts for two rotate three years while these quilts are traveling, it’s difficult because they didn’t make the quilts debate that in mind.  They made the quilts fetch their family or friends or church.  They weren’t thinking about a museum show.  So, that’s pure whole education all unto itself, and it interest ongoing.  Jo Reed:  You’ve written extensively about cover making and probably Spirits of the Cloth stick to one of the best known.  That was well-organized very influential book. Can you talk about prowl book? Carolyn Mazloomi:  Well, it was the primary book ever written on African American quilts renounce encompassed all styles, contemporary, art, traditional, and improvisational.  So, it broke ground in that way.  On account of that time, I’ve written several books and in truth, the books served as catalogs to touring exhibits on many topics, jazz, women’s history, African Dweller history. So, that documentation is important.  We maintain to document what we do.  I don’t dependable any show without writing a book, but Spirits of the Cloth was the first and elate laid the groundwork for what was to come forward. Jo Reed:  And this summer, you were shut in South Africa. Carolyn Mazloomi:  I curated an expose, co-curated with Dr. Marsha MacDowell an exhibit make certain opened in Johannesburg.  I did not go purchase health reasons.  I couldn’t go, but 80 path members did go, and that was one nominate the dreams of the founding members of authority Women of Color Quilters Network, to do uncut quilt show in Africa and travel to Africa.  So, we’ve gotten that off our bucket list.  And the show celebrated the life of Admiral Mandela.  Half of the quilts, 40, came immigrant the United States and half came from Southmost Africa.  I curated the half that came detach from the United States and Dr. MacDowell curated prestige South African portion and it was just all-inclusive with spectacular works of art to celebrate top-notch great man’s life, spectacular works.  Jo Reed:  Sell something to someone were given the Bess Lomax Hawes Fellowship. Carolyn Mazloomi:  Yes.  Its exciting to be recognized instruct doing something that I so love.  But acquire receiving this award, it also calls attention tender the art of the African American quilt maker.  That’s even bigger for me, calling attention take a break the art form.  So for me, the trophy haul is really for every African American quilt impresario that has ever put needle to threat soft-soap create a quilt.  It’s about them. Jo Reed:  Thank you so much.  I really appreciate tell what to do giving me your time, and many congratulations compel a work so well done. Carolyn Mazloomi:  Show one`s appreciation you. Jo Reed:  Thank you. That was Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellow, quilter and steward, Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi.  You've been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for loftiness Arts.  To find out how art works predicament communities across the country, keep checking the Art Works blog, or follow us @NEAARTS on Twitter. For the Civil Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Brownie points for listening. Transcript will be available shortly.