Interviewer: OK.
Let’s consider this more personally and less
academically. I am curious to know where your mind
is, if you will, when you create the more traditional,
I mean— When you create constructions of pieced
cottons, what do you think about?
Roberts:
I think about my great-great-grandmother,
Leila Borders Corry. She was born in 1890. She went
to Lincoln Academy. She was a schoolteacher. When
I was a girl, my mother and I lived with my grandmother.
I slept under a quilt made by my great-great-grandmother.
I loved that quilt. I was a child; I didn’t
even know what a quilt was. But somehow, when my
mother, aunt, and grandmother tucked me under this
quilt, I knew I was loved. I still wrap myself in
that quilt when I go home. I think about her and
all the women—and men—in my family who
I love dearly. I feel connected to them.
And I think about the women in my quilt circle,
the African American Quilt Circle. They are so wonderful
and loving and supportive and amazingly talented.
I think about them. I feel connected to them.
And I think about enslaved women who quilted to
warm their families. And rural women who created
utilitarian quilts that are breathtaking in their
design and composition and either subtle of evocative
use of color. I have a tremendous respect for their
art.
I feel connected to women when I quilt. Women known
to me and women imagined.
Interviewer:
What, then, is in your mind when you create
mixed media abstract and photographic contemporary
constructions? When you work with canvas, acrylics,
oil and soft pastels, watercolors, beads and embellishments,
ceramics, unconventional threads? When you create
using surgical implements, fly fishing tools, hardware
clamps, power tools?
Roberts:
[I think about] the striking linear nature
of many African textiles, particularly Bogolanfini
and Kuba cloth. I think about jazz. Stillness, movement,
simplicity, complexity.
That aspect of my quilting is more contemplative,
more introspective. I look inward. I think about
myself, my journey, my process, my values.
I think about meaning. |
