12 hours Ago
I have a physical record of textiles going back five years. Out of the hundreds of artists in the Pioneer Valley, I am just a drop in the bucket. Not only do the textile artists of Greenfield have enough history in their work to create a collective consciousness, but they also create sources of income, trade and community.
The Indigenous peoples of the United States believed that to create a perfect piece of artwork was to trap a piece of your soul within it. But the soul of Greenfield is not held in perfect works of art but in the soft hands of the young and gentle, guiding eyes of the old. Our history lives not in museums but in the used fabric traded across a dozen hands before it finds an owner.
It lives in the gifted blankets, embroidered denim jackets and aging quilting cotton that travel all over town and the Pioneer Valley in the hopes of finding an owner or a creator. To track the passage of just one item would be to map half the town. Greenfield breathes with the creativity of shared artwork.
Evangeline Heath Greenfield.
