Names Project / The AIDS Quilt
Project Research
An archive
of the research, influences, and ideas for our Story Quilt project with unhoused communities and the organizations that support them.
Rosie Lee Tompkins
Rosie Lee Tompkins was a Bay Area quilter known for her brightly colored improvisational quilts. With help from collector Eli Leon, Tompkins brought traditional quilting into a contemporary art context both in form and production.
︎ Read our thoughts on Tompkins’ work
︎ Tompkins obituary, NY Times
Kawartha Truth and Reconciliation Project
KTARP is a group of first peoples and settlers based in Canada, who meet monthly to share stories and histories, learn from each other, and make quilts. While quilting they talk about the brutal history of Canada’s colonial project, racism, and inequality. Each quilt panel illustrates an individual and varied perspective on the theme of the legacy of the residential schools in Canada.
︎ Go to website
Names Project /
AIDS Memorial Quilt
The largest piece of folk art in the world.
︎ Names Project / AIDS Memorial Quilt information and history
︎ The Quilt digitzewd and interactive via National Aids Memorial website
Faith Ringgold
Iconic multimedia artist Faith Ringgold has said that she switched from painting as a medium to fabric to get away from the association of painting with Western/European traditions. Similarly, the use of quilt allowed her advocation of the feminist movement as she could simply roll up her quilts to take to the gallery, therefore negating the need of any assistance from her husband.
︎ Artist website
Ana Torma
We love Canadian-Hungarian textile artist Anna Torma’s work because it expands the parameters of what a story quilt could be.
︎ Artist website