November 2006
Associate Vice President is Nationally Acclaimed Quilt Artist, Expert
SAN LUIS OBISPO -- Associate Vice President for Student Affairs Denise Campbell is a quilt artist whose quilts are sought by the Smithsonian Institution, featured in national exhibition catalogues.
Campbell will speak on quilt artistry and significance at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 14, in Chumash Auditorium at Cal Poly. Her slide presentation and talk is titled “The Signifying Quilt: Preserving Cultural Remnants through African American Quiltmaking.”
She is speaking as part of a Cal Poly LEAP (Linking Educators and Parents for the Arts) lecture program.
Campbell serves as Cal Poly’s associate vice president for Student Affairs.
She has turned her scholarly pursuit of African American quilt history into a means of conveying spiritual messages of inspiration and healing.
The Smithsonian has twice asked her to consider placing her quilts in permanent collections there. The two pieces are currently on national tours with the "Threads of Faith" quilt exhibition and the "Textural Rhythms" quilt exhibition which will show at the Smithsonian in the future. So far, she's declined to give the quilts up for permanent display, though she knows it would be quite an honor.
"I made the pieces to influence the self-identity and positive esteem of young black women in particular, and I am not sure the quilts can best achieve this goal if they remain part of collections that may not been seen by the public on a regular basis," she explained.
Her 2004 creation, titled “Would
the Real Jemima Please Stand Up and Claim Her Inheritance?” was part of a quilt exhibit that shown Gallery of the American Bible Society in New York City.
The show, “Threads of Faith: Recent Works from the Women of Color
Quilters Network,” examined contemporary African American quilts
inspired by faith, the Bible and American
Christian traditions, according to Campbell. The exhibition earned
very favorable reviews in both The New York Times and New York Newsday.
Campbell’s piece in the exhibit was the first in her Jemima series. She said it was inspired by the Bible’s “Book of Job.”
“Jemima, whose name means ‘beautiful as the day,’ was the eldest
daughter of Job’s restored life,” Campbell explained. “God intended Jemima to
be remembered as a symbol of beauty and restoration. (In America), popular man-made images of Jemima evolved from a grotesque caricature
of a black woman slave on a pancake box.”
Campbell said the quilt took her 500 hours to complete, and she created it to dispel
negative stereotypes about black women. “Scholars
suggest that by interrogating and deconstructing such negative
representations, we begin the process of rendering them ineffectual."
The LEAP lecture is sponsored by the Central Coast Center for Arts Education and supported with funds from the San Luis Obispo Community Foundation. All lectures are free and open to the public. Lesson plans on quilting and integrating quilting into other content areas will be available free of charge to teachers.
For more information on Campbell’s presentation or the LEAP program, contact Professor Susan Duffy of the Cal Poly Central Coast Center for Arts Education at
756-2935.
# # #
Cal
Poly Update is a newsletter for University friends and
alumni and is prepared by the Cal
Poly Public Affairs Office. Please share it with
anyone you think may be interested in learning more
about Cal Poly. However, if you wish to be excluded
from e-mail sent from Cal Poly, please click
here and follow the instructions. If you would like
to update your alumni contact information, please click
here.
Cal
Poly News
