“What Unites Us,” 2021

Cross stitch and double running stitch, cotton thread on linen Aida fabric, four panels, each 60” high x 20” wide (installed size: 60” high x minimum of 96” wide)

This four-panel piece, which took me about fifteen months to stitch, combines slogans from contemporary political buttons with decorative motifs from American and British samplers of the late 17th century to the early 19th century. The slogans are carefully chosen not to reflect my own politics but to remind Americans across the political and cultural spectrum of values and ideals we may share. I chose sampler designs from that period because it is the mythologized age during which the American mould was set and the American project begun. Each panel references one historical sampler style. Panel 1 is an English-style Quaker sampler; panel 2 is a band sampler drawing on 18th century designs; panel 3 is more in the style of American Quaker samplers of the early 19th century; and panel 4 is a band sampler drawn primarily from the late 17th and early 18th centuries, during the transition from blackwork to cross stitch.

My first political artwork, “What Unites Us” was conceived in 2018, begun a few months before the Covid-19 pandemic started, worked on throughout the politically dark and medically disastrous year of 2020, and finished in early 2021. I am not a political activist by nature but an artist who tries to create beauty. I hope that by using intricate and painstakingly worked cross stitch and blackwork designs, I can get people to slow down, read what I have stitched, and recognize some of the commonalities that unite Americans despite our current destructive divisions.

Detail images: