Artist Ceci Lewis lead a special extended Art Speaks lecture on how to create a textile reliquary. Reliquary structures abound throughout human history in cultural and spiritual practice. Used to conceal or reveal, they express narrative and concept, and are used to hold, to enshrine, to contain power, and to protect. Reliquaries range from personal to architectural. Consider the White House, court houses, houses of worship, museums, monuments, photo albums, scrapbooks, curio cabinets – these are all reliquaries.

Artist Bio:

Ceci Lewis has been an artist, photographer, quilter, and garment sewer for more than fifty years. She works with indigo and other natural dyes, and imagery using the human figure is prominent in her work. Utilizing and teaching sustainable practices, along with exploring the narrative, is her specialty. She has cultivated a rainbow of natural dye colors in her postage-stamp-sized yard, and has shared natural dyeing with more than a thousand children in the metro area. Lewis served a lead artist in collaboration with Penumbra Theatre, Textile Center, and many talented quilters for “Black Nativity”. Her quilt, New World, is part of the Minnesota History Center’s permanent collection.