Makerspace: Stitches

Columbus fiber artist River F. Berry speaks to history, trauma through the medium of quilting

Story and Photos by Taylor Dorrell, Story Design by Atlas Biro

In her thesis, the Columbus-based fiber and print-making artist River F. Berry, observes that “feminist artists use a myriad of techniques and mediums to uplift their communities through their continued use of traditional crafts to explore and often subvert concepts of domesticity, womanhood, and 'women’s work'.”

Today, the CCAD grad and Columbusbased artist continues this through work of her own, which, using the fabric arts, aims to explore generational trauma while stitching communities together, just like the squares on one of her quilts.

Her work, often possessing a playful, almost childlike quality at first soothes the viewer into a state of belonging and familiarity. There is a warmth and a slowness that her chosen medium, quilting and fiber can attain, offering a break from today’s speedy digital world.

“Many of us can’t remember a life without our grandmothers’ quilts draped across our beds or wrapped around bodies protecting us from the cold,” Berry said

But beneath the bright colors and playful compositions is both the loaded history and the trauma inherent within. “I'm kind of investigating how that legacy is passed down, along with generational trauma, through families, and for me personally, as a woman, and through the women in my family,” Berry told me.

The history and trauma, far from acting solely as a conceptual element, is literally ingrained in Berry’s craft.

Her work is partly driven by inspiring figures in her life like her grandmother, the late Columbus craft artist Sue Cavanaugh, and the late Dorothy Gill-Barnes, whose leftover materials Berry sometimes uses in her work. She hopes that recycling these materials carries on the legacies of those who came before her. “I would like to think that through my work I am keeping [their] practice alive,” she said.

At the foundation of her work is the theme of intersectional feminism. Intersectional feminism expands feminist thinking to include races, classes and all other groups who may have not been previously included. It enlarges who feminism is for and what equality might look like for everyone interested in it. This way, according to political activist Claudia Jones, it’s not only sex this is confronted, but also race and class.

Combining all of these aspects of intersectional feminism is one of Berry’s main inspirations, the late Columbusbased artist, Aminah Robinson. “Robinson assembled, in her own way, a physical legacy of black communities in Columbus,” Berry reflected. Robinson’s mixed media works employed sewing, painting, and many other mediums to depict her community in Columbus. In her work, Berry hopes to reflect her community similar to Robinson.

Today, there are now an everincreasing number of feminist artists who are utilizing the medium of craft arts, once restrained privately to the home, to highlight the inequalities, history, and trauma out in the open. Artists like River F. Berry are making work that brings this history into display for us to confront, while also showing us how far we've come.

“These works,” Berry said, “become physical manifestations of women’s empowerment and progress.”

To see more of River's work, visit riverfberry.com