Top: Molleen Theodore with a young attendee. Jessica Smolinski Photo. Bottom: Patch Bowen and Jackie Gonzalez. Mindi Rose Englart Photo. All other photos are by Mindi Rose Englart.
Patch Bowen—whose name just happened to fit the occasion—patiently sewed a green rectangle onto a pink felt background. He sat next to Jackie Gonzalez, a friend he met as a fellow student at the University of New Haven, who was visiting from the Bronx. With roughly 100 other people, they listened to a lively mixed genre playlist and nibbled chocolates as they put the finishing touches on a 30-foot-long community quilt.
Welcome to the most recent iteration of Yale University Art Gallery’s Sidewalk Studio, which is working with community members to complete a quilt participants started in June. Though last week’s event took place in the lobby, Sidewalk Studio normally runs outdoors on Chapel Street in front of the Yale University Art Gallery.
Sidewalk Studio fosters impromptu art making on a drop-in basis by setting up a variety of participatory outdoor art projects for passersby. The idea is to engage people on the street and then invite them into the building to explore the collections.
The idea for the quilting project took shape among a group of people who work at the Yale University Art Gallery, including Jane and Gerald Katcher Curator of Programs Molleen Theodore, Bradley Associate Curator of Academic Affairs Sydney Simon, and Documentation Photographer Jessica Smolinski, as well as Jackie Gleisner, communications manager at the Yale Center for British Art.
Simon, Gleisner, and Smolinski also know each other from Quilt Club New Haven, which usually takes place on the third Sunday of the month from 1-4 p.m. at the Eli Whitney Museum & Workshop.
“We decided to hold three drop-in sewing sessions to coincide with the election as an opportunity for people to contribute to an ambitious communal project—a parallel for the type of collective action that makes government work,” said Gleisner. “I did not anticipate how it would turn out, but I have to say it’s been pretty nice.”
Sarah Mead Leonard, a fiber artist and art historian who works at the Yale Center for British Art, said she quilted at the Sidewalk Studio event in June and was happy it was back during election week.
“It’s nice to be in the community, doing something with your hands,” Mead Leonard said. “It was very timely when I saw when it was going to be. I have lots of thoughts about the election.”
Sarah Mead Leonard.
She said sewing is what she does to relieve stress and feel better, so doing it in community felt good.
Bowen, whose major is multiplatform journalism, agreed that creating something together was important.
“Especially now,” they said. “It’s important to strengthen the community ties we have.”