Stitching Black Legacy: The Quilts of Carolyn Mazloomi
Minneapolis • April 22 – July 12, 2025
Textile Center is honored to present the work of Dr. Mazloomi, a founding member of Textile Center’s National Artist Advisory Council, Bess Lomax Hawes NEA National Heritage Fellow, United States Artists Fellow, American Textile Society Fellow, Ohio Heritage Fellow, American Craft Council Honorary Fellow, 2024 Taproot Fellow, and founder of the African American Quilt Guild of Los Angeles and the Women of Color Quilters Network.
Click here to view the exhibition press release. | Click here to read our Substack: Celebrating a National Treasure: Carolyn L. Mazloomi.
Reception + Art Speaks
Please join us in welcoming Carolyn L. Mazloomi to Textile Center with an artist reception on Friday, May 16, 5:30 to 8 pm, at Textile Center.
Carolyn will share about her work and the exhibition in an Art Speaks conversation that evening from 6 – 6:30 pm. This exhibition will be presented both in person and virtually, free and open to the public.
Click here to register for the Art Speaks.
Guest Teaching Artist Workshops
We are thrilled to welcome Ed Johnetta Miller and Sylvia Hernández — members of the Women of Color Quilters Network — to Textile Center this May for three quilting workshops.
These workshops are part of our special May programming in connection with Stitching Black Legacy: The Quilts of Carolyn Mazloomi.
Ed Johnetta Miller
Improvisational Quilting, May 13 – 15, 2025
Learn more + register
Sylvia Hernández
Collage Quilted Portraits, May 16, 2025
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Sew Your Story: Quilted Portraits, May 17, 2025
Learn more + register
We Are the Story
Minneapolis • September 10, 2020 – June 12, 2021
When Minneapolis became the epicenter of the nationwide protest movement against police brutality and racism in America following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, Textile Center and Women of Color Quilters Network (WCQN) joined forces to create We Are the Story, a multi-venue initiative in the Twin Cities, September 10, 2020, through June 12, 2021, curated by Carolyn L. Mazloomi.
Two juried exhibitions– Gone but Never Forgotten: Remembering Those Lost to Police Brutality and Racism: In the Face of Hate We Resist– served as a centerpiece for We Are the Story.
Given the urgency of these issues in America, quilters from around the nation worked under an extremely tight creative timeline. The calls were open in mid-June 2020 to all artists regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, race, religion, creed, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity in mid-June, and 423 quilts were submitted by the July 31, 2020 deadline. Mazloomi selected 89 quilts for the two exhibitions.
We Are the Story: A Visual Response to Racism • Zoom Event Recording
This culminating We Are the Story event, hosted by Curator Carolyn L. Mazloomi and Textile Center Executive Director Karl Reichert, honored the release of the new book We Are the Story: A Visual Response to Racism by Paper Moon Publishing in partnership with Textile Center and WCQN. The following featured artists who created quilts for these exhibitions joined the conversation: Dorothy Burge, Ed Johnetta Miller, Michelle Flamer, Sharon Kerry-Harlan, Sylvia Hernández, Maude Wallace Haeger, and Cynthia Lockhart.
We Are the Story: A Visual Response to Racism Book by Carolyn L. Mazloomi
We Are the Story: A Visual Response to Racism documents We Are the Story, a series of group and solo quilt exhibitions responding to the murder of George Floyd. Curated by Carolyn L. Mazloomi and co-presented by Textile Center and Women of Color Quilters Network, this book features more than 100 quilts in two juried exhibitions – Gone but Never Forgotten: Remembering Those Lost to Police Brutality and Racism: In the Face of Hate We Resist, as well as the solo shows I Wish I Knew How it Feels to be Free: Quilts by Dorothy Burge (Chicago, IL), Freedom Rising: I Am the Story: Quilts by L’Merchie Frazier (Boston, MA), Sacred Invocations: Quilts by Sylvia Hernández (Brooklyn, NY), and The Protest Series: Quilts by Penny Mateer (Pittsburgh, PA).