The Wilson Art Gallery in the Noreen Reale Falcone Library is currently hosting “Women’s Wealth,” an art exhibit created by anthropology and peace and global studies professor Caroline Tauxe. The exhibit contains quilts and fiber arts, many of which were created in a matter of months.
“I don’t actually keep track [of how long it takes me], since it is the process I enjoy, not just the finished work,” Tauxe said. “I have been working on this exhibit for about 10 months, and it contains maybe a dozen or so works that I made in that time, including two that I did just days before the opening!
“But it is also a sort of retrospective, with a sampling from my entire quilting career,” she continued. “I am in a prolific phase right now; I’ve made three more since the show opened.”
The title of the exhibit refers to the notion that quilts and fiber arts are usually created by women.
“In the Southern tradition of quilting, it is an artistic expression mainly of women, produced and consumed within the domestic context, in households which may have no other works of art or objects of value,” Tauxe explained. “Because of its ‘folk’ origins, it is not always recognized as a serious art form. Contemporary quilting and fiber art remains a largely women’s genre, and reflects the greater world engagement of women today.”
Despite her lengthy interest in quilting and fiber arts, this is Tauxe’s first exhibit. Hanging the works up in the library proved to be a rewarding experience.
“I have never exhibited my work before, and never expected to be able to show all the very large pieces that are hanging in the library atrium,” Tauxe said. “They really require a big space like that and I’ve never seen them properly displayed before.
“Over the days when I was hanging the art, so many people who happened to come by got drawn into looking at the art and got excited about it,” she continued. “I had so many great conversations and met so many interesting people during that process.”
Although Tauxe is an anthropology professor (she received a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Yale University and a doctorate in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley), only a handful of pieces in the exhibit are related to the subject.
“A few of the pieces are explicitly related to my theoretical interest in money as a cultural object, and others are responses to cross-cultural experiences I’ve had, like the one with Ghanaian fabric, bottle caps and beads,” said Tauxe. “The big one called ‘All Our Relations’ is a visual representation of an aspect of Onondaga cosmology/ traditional ecological knowledge. But most of them are personal and political expressions rather than directly anthropology-related. I like the idea of integrating all of my experience holistically in this medium, which I suppose is an anthropological way of thinking.”
Tauxe hopes the exhibit will engage viewers and get them to think about how they could tell their own stories in an artistic manner.
“Quilts are easy for people to relate to,” she noted. “They invite viewers in and evoke a personal response. I hope to inspire viewers to think about their own important stories and how they could be told in this medium. I enjoy teaching fiber art, helping people figure out how to express themselves in this way. Maybe I will get to teach a fiber art class at Le Moyne some time!”
“Women’s Wealth” will run through Wednesday, March 27.
