Interview with Sherry Boram

Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I'm conducting a Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Sherry Boram. Sherry is in Pendleton, Indiana, and I'm in Naperville, Illinois, so we are conducting this interview over the telephone. Today's date is January 23, 2009. It is now 10:12 in the morning. Sherry, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to share with me. Please tell me about your quilt "DAWN."

Sherry Boram (SB): Karen thanks a lot for wanting to hear about it. "DAWN" is the quilt that I made in response to Sue Walen's request for anyone who had made or wanted to make a quilt honoring our new president, Barack Obama. This was on the QuiltArt list that I'm a part of along with another three thousand people. Apparently sixty quilt artists responded to her over a period of two or three days. They came from all over the country and Australia and maybe some other foreign country, but it was just an amazing outpouring of people who wanted to express their feelings about the new president, the new administration and the new direction that our country is taking through their art. After Sue had her bright idea, then she proceeded to try to find someplace to display the quilts and she was lucky enough to make a contact with Montgomery Collect in Silver Spring, Maryland and the Cafritz Art Center happened to have an opening in their display schedule. These quilts, from all these sixty people all over are going to be exhibited ["President Obama: A Celebration in Art Quilts."] in the Cafritz Art Center at 150 King Street in Silver Spring, Maryland beginning February 9 I believe through March 5. The opening reception is going to be February 13, and I'm going so I'm very excited about this, provided the weather is okay. I'm hoping for cooperative weather heading to the [Washington.] D.C. area in February.

I had not made a quilt. I thought about it but when it comes to a really important quilt it takes me quite a bit of thinking time and I had some other things on my agenda so in between doing those kinds of things and everyday life I began to formulate in my head what I wanted to express in this quilt. I'm basically not very good at expressing my true feelings in a conversation. I don't like debating, but if I can write things down or if I have enough time to think about things and the concept that I want to express, then I can put them, indeed I can put them in a quilt or a piece of art. Of course, this was around holiday time. We have three November birthdays in my family plus we had some other projects going on. My husband and I are retired so we just have things going all the time. He is a woodworker and so those things were kind of in the way and then we have Thanksgiving and then we have Christmas and in the meantime all this stuff is going on in my head. I lost sleep over it because I have a tendency to be real creative when I get horizontal. [laughs.] Sometimes it keeps me very much awake. Sometimes it puts me to sleep but this instance I was so excited about the whole idea about our family, or about our country going a different direction that I did lose a lot of sleep.

The quilt itself was made probably during a period of a couple of weeks. I decided I wanted to depict the earth and I wanted to depict the coming of the dawn, the dawn being the Obama era. For me Obama is the idea, it is not only a man but he is representing the better instincts that are held by most of the people in the world and I think his election proved that millions of Americans get it. I thought about the qualities that I feel Barack Obama instills and these are qualities that I wanted to depict in the quilt. I'm thinking how better to do it then to have them in the sky as the Obama name comes over the horizon in the morning. This proves to be some, some difficult technical things for me to overcome. One of the things I did which I thought was pretty smart of me was to go to Google Earth. I needed a shot of the earth in the right pose. Well Google Earth enables you to do that. I got to Google Earth and then I twirled that baby around until I got it where I wanted it. I wanted the down coming up in the east. That took me a little while to figure that out because I really originally had the earth down the lower right hand corner and I thought this is not going to work so I put it in the left hand corner with the dawn coming up on the east coast of the United States just like it should, but between the sun and the earth there are the letters 'Obama' casting a shadow on the earth. That took me a little while to do plus the fact that I, the first earth that I made just didn't work out. I did it with a mosaic technique using all kinds of bits of fabric and the colors didn't work out with the sky that I had made so I set that aside and started on of course number two and that was much more satisfactory for my eye. The big qualities of hope, peace and joy were what I wanted to focus on, but also in the sky I used rubber stamps that I have put a lot of words in there. I feel like Obama represents wisdom, courage, honor, humor, which I think is really important in a leader, humility, intelligence. We hear him use the word pragmatism a lot, respect. I think Barack Obama represents a lot of balance. I think he is intelligent, represents curiosity and fairness, determination, patriotism. I think he is a generous spirit and an honorable one, so those are some of the terms that I used in the sky. The rest of it was just a matter of the broad concept and with the sun kind of coming through his name on the skyline.

KM: What are your plans for this quilt?

SB: At the present, there is only one live venue for sure, but there are others possibly in the future. I think there might be a book about this and I have heard that there will be at least one magazine article, Quilter's Newsletter magazine article about it. I think it will generate a lot of interest. First of all, it is not the only Obama quilting project going. I know that there are others. This particular one will be shown in Montgomery County, Maryland is going to be in a very liberal, progressive part of the district area and so I have a feeling that there might be some people that might be interested in buying quilts that are exhibited. There will be a lot of quilts that will be very affordable, mine included. There will be some that are made by world class quilters which will be very, much larger price tag so I don't know. I would be happy for mine to go out to someone who feels like it fits in with their spirit. When I made it and usually when I make quilts I release them. I either give them away or donate them or I have sold a few and that's just fine with me. I have it in my heart so if it is gone I still have it. One of my, I just thought of another technical problem I had was trying to figure out what kind of, how to make that glow from the sun come through the 'Obama' text on the horizon. I tried several things in little samples and what I finally ended up using was PearlEx gold powder and I just rubbed it on with my finger and it is hard to see in an image how much it sparkles but in real life it sparkles really well and I was very pleased. I put a sealer on it so I think it will hold up really well. This is the first quilt that I didn't want a binding on so I used a facing. I didn't want any trim around the edge. I just wanted it out there in space. The binding works fine, I've done a lot of sewing through my lifetime up close so I knew how to make bindings, I know how to make facing, or I knew how to make a facing instead of a binding so I'm very happy with that. This particular quilt I wanted quite a bit of loft in the earth part. I used wool batting which I just love but I didn't have enough for the whole quilt so the earth part is done individually with wool batting and then I put it over the whole thing with cotton batting. Other than that, I think I had a pretty easy time of it. I like to use rubber stamps and that is how I did the large and the small text and then I just cut out the 'Obama' letters out of some beautiful hand painted fabric from Jeanette's Fabrics to Dye For and as far as where it goes it will just go where ever it needs to go. I'm going to trust the universe.

KM: You made another Obama quilt called "On That Day," tell me about it.

SB: Yes, that one was a smaller one, a more delicate looking one. Neither of these quilts have the image of Obama and neither of them are using red, white and blue. I wanted to depart from that because I feel that this is much larger than the United States which is represented usually by red, white and blue. On the day of the election and we had voted in advance because we were going to be gone for several weeks and in case we didn't get back in time I wanted to make sure my vote was in there. We did get back on Sunday because we were ready to come home, number one and number two I wanted to be home so that I could be right here to watch everything. I didn't have to leave the house all day long, however I went out in the yard and I picked up several leaves off of one of my favorite trees in my yard and they were turning nice colors and I brought them in and stuck them in an old phone book and really kind of forgot about it. I remember thinking at the time this is such a historic day to be picking up leaves and sometimes I do that, I will pick up something from nature, from a historic place or at a historic time and here I had those leaves. About a week later, and this was even before I think I knew about this call for Obama quilts I found the leaves and I thought I really ought to do something with these and I made photo copy on fabric. I have a real, real accurate image of these fragile, dry crumbling leaves which I still have. I still want to save. After I finished the "DAWN" quilt I thought I would really like to make another one about nature and history and about my place in all of this. I decided to make a quilt using these leaves. It is an oval quilt. It is done on silk fabric so it is very delicate, kind of delicate looking and kind of pale and gentle looking. I put the leaves with stems in towards the center in an oval shape and then I put an image of the earth in the center. [coughs.] I decided to use images of all the state quilts, excuse me all the state flags and so they are in the oval as well. Around the edge with no color change with this pale off white silk I stamped text and the text said, 'On this day Barack Obama was elected President of the United States' and then farther around I put, 'On this day I picked these leaves off the ground in my lawn in Indiana' and then farther around it says, 'On this day hope returns.' At the bottom has the date '11-04-09.' That was a real pleasant experience. I didn't agonize over that one, that went together pretty well but it pretty much embodied the feeling I have about the global importance of this event.

I look at art as a spiritual practice. As a matter of fact, most of the time I'm under the radar when I make quilts. I do them for me. I used to make them because they were, because I was interested in making something that I thought was pretty, but making pretty quilts just for the sake of making pretty quilts has lost its appeal for me I want to make quilts with meaning. I've made several of them with meaning. Some of them are really not pretty at all. Some turned out pretty nice looking but I have ideas for a lot more because I feel like I can express who I really am in my art, even better than how I express myself in words. This little secret about me is being kept from most of my friends and family, I was raised Republican and my feeling is that one of the problems that we have in our country is that politics has been denied as a subject of polite conversation. I think we need to talk about politics. I think we also need to have dialogue about religion. [takes a drink.] Anyway, I went through a period of really thinking real hard about my political leanings. I didn't know what that meant when I was growing up because I pretty much didn't have a chance to have any original ideas. I've been rootie kazootie with my [laughs.] original ideas in my later years. I've didn't even start making quilts until I was a grandmother and now I'm making some that might be considered controversial so I'm really in my form here being controversial. Back to the political feelings about this culture, I began to think about what qualities I could use to describe the conservative political feelings and they didn't match mine and so I kind of moved into being an independent progressive and so here I am and there probably be more progressive quilts coming out of these fingers.

KM: Do you have plans to make more Obama quilts?

SB: You know I just might. I really wanted, if I had more time I wanted to make one picturing four pairs of shoes, one for each of the four in the Obama family because I think that this family, the focus on this family and the way they are parenting these two little girls is so important and I'm hoping that it catches on and people will be inspired by their example of parenting. I wanted to, I just think what a real personal part of them, I had seen somewhere I had seen pictures of Barack Obama's shoe bottoms with holes in them [coughs.] excuse me and that says an awful lot about a man. I heard an interview with Michelle talking about his holey shoes and I'm thinking he is just so focused on his dreams for this country and that he is not really paying attention to the bottom [laughs.] of his shoes which I think is in sharp contrast with a lot of our leaders and a lot of our idols in this country. [coughs.]

KM: I can't remember a president inspiring so much art. Why do you think so many people were drawn to making quilts about Obama?

SB: I don't know. I tell you his smile inspires me as much as his message does. It reminds me of the Dalai Lama and of Bishop Tutu. Both men who carry enormous burdens of their people but they are all three men that can smile and they can grin and they can even guffaw and under such conditions that this gives me a lot of hope and it gives me a lot of peace and a lot of joy and I don't know I think probably there are a lot of quilters out there like me who like to express their deepest feelings in their art and I don't know, its just one of those things. Another quilt I thought I might do when I was in the process of making these two. When I finally get a quilt going and I'm through the agony of figuring out what I want to do, designing it and managing all the technical problems then in the process of actually making it, which is the fun part my mind is going on to the next one. I'm like a maniac and I'm thinking, 'Oh, if I could only make one of his face and he is green, just like the green man holding the earth in his hands with leaves coming out around [laughs.] his face.' Last night I saw a commercial on television for oh, what's that clay head that you put seed in?

KM: Oh the Chia. [pause,]

SB: Yeah, they have a Chia Pet know, an Obama Chia Pet.

KM: Oh my goodness.

SB: [laughs.] I guess he inspires all kinds of doodads and marketing and art and I guess as long as he is inspiring that is a good thing. I don't think I want a Chia Pet. I think I'm just perfectly happy with him being just where he is, just as he is even though I might make more quilts I don't know.

KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why?

SB: I'm drawn to some that are very controlled, very linear, very perfect and then the opposite. I like Susan Shie's so much. I like Terrie Mangat so much and I've had classes with both of them and I've come away without really ever finishing anything that I've started in those classes and I realized that is just not me, I can't do that kind of work although I would love to do that loose free wheeling kind of art. Well you've seen my postcards Karen and you know how they are. [laughs.] I just can't help myself. I just have to do what I have to do. I certainly do admire the controlled, the precise quilts of artists like--oh I can't think of anybody right now. If I see them I would recognize them.

KM: You can fill it in later if it occurs to you. Not a problem.

SB: Another thing about the two classes that I took with Terrie and Susan, I realized when I came away that I wasn't going there to learn how to make their quilts. I think I just wanted to be around their spirit. I wanted to hear how they created, I wanted to feel that energy, I wanted to see it in action and both of the times that I spent with both of them I felt like I had come away with winning the prize that I had really gotten everything I wanted. Although like I said my work doesn't really reflect that. I've done a little bit of Susan's 'chicken stitches', I've done quite a bit of beading, I've gotten away from it a bit but I have enjoyed painting with Setacolor paints. I've surprised myself really that I can do it. The first time I tried it we were in a camper in the Blue Ridge area of the western part of Virginia and I had signed up for a black and white challenge for Anne Copeland's group [Fiberarts Connection of Southern California.] and I thought how am I going to do this and I happened to take in my small little stash of quilting materials, art materials to our RV I had a jar of black paint, I had some prepared for dyeing fabrics, I had some ornamental yarns, I had beads and I made a quilt that turned out really well and I was so surprised because I didn't know I could do it. Painting to me is fun. I like to do it because it is fast. It is almost instant gratification. I don't piece anymore. I don't do a lot of appliqu, if I do it is raw edge or just I like to do a lot of couching of decorative yarns so I do that a lot around the edges of raw edge appliqu that I do. I like to stitch. I like to do stitching lines that shadow that echo and that is kind of what I did in the earth image that I did on the "DAWN" quilt and I vary them, the stitching is not in measured rows but it's varied, it kind of gives the idea of the proper topography of the land, give it some shape and I really like doing that and I used to do that just with a presser foot and then all of a sudden I realized that people were doing that with a walking foot [laughs.] and it just makes it so much easier and so much more successful. I like to do a lot of that and um I guess probably I've got my style and I'm just going to stick at it although I do really like the intricacies of quilters who have very, very, or have the opposite of free wheeling styles and then of course I like those free wheelers.

KM: Do you think of yourself as an artist or a quiltmaker or do you make a distinction?

SB: I think we are all artists I just think it takes a little bit longer for some of us to call ourselves that because it has been kind of [pause.] an elitist term maybe and then also as everybody as a child gets told that you can't do this, you can't do that, your not very successful of this and that. It took me a while to call myself an artist, but yeah I'm an artist. I'm a quilter and I'm comfortable with those terms. I grew up in a family of musicians so I didn't have a lot of opportunity to create art. There were not raw materials around that I would have loved to have had. I did have one success as a child, one long running success, my grandmother liked my duck so I would draw ducks and I would sell them and she would pay me a nickel for my ducks [laughs.] so that was wonderful. My art life when I was a kid was all about the ducks and then when I was in school art class was my favorite class of course and there was a student a year older than me who was an extraordinary artist and the art teacher recognized that and she would bring Susan around to all of the classes to show her art work and I was so inspired. One time, I don't know whether the whole class did this or not but we were doing collages, I mean if you can call them collages back in the mid-forties, I guess you could but we did little Christmas collages and I had probably gotten some foil off--I peeled it off of chewing gum wrapper which took some patience as an eight year old, here I peeled this off and I cut a circle and I scotch taped it in the sky as the moon. I don't know, whether I meant the star, but it was in this manger scene with cotton and with the foil and with the tape. I still have it and of course it has yellowed but there it is. So it is with the cotton and the foil and I really, really valued that little piece of art and I still do. I also [laughs.] for some reason or other I took a pair of scissors one day back in the third grade and I thought I think I will make myself a pair of paper scissors. I cut out the two parts of the scissors and I figured out a way to hook them together so they would move, and so that was really neat. I like making things. Not just, I'm not a picture painter and I'm not a, I like multi-media kind of things so um, those two things appeal to me a lot and I like the variety of things that I use on my quilts, so I like the texture, I like the variety of the fabrics, I like the variety of yarns. I've got all kinds of yarns and decorative fibers, a lot of them came from a cousin who was a long time weaver and she has given me a lot of things to use. I do have quite a selection and I like using them. The hand dyed fabrics that I find at quilt shows I like to buy. Some of them are a little expensive but when I was using the painted metallic painted fabric for the Obama effect on the "DAWN" quilt I realized this is not expensive at all. I'm using little bits and parts of it and this really was exactly the right fabric in my mind's eye for this particular quilt because it kind of gave it a glow. I was really, really pleased with the way that turned out. Back to your question, yeah, I'm an artist and I'm a quilter. I'm a whole lot of things and those are two important things in my life and I once told somebody that they said do you quilt a lot and I said I don't get to quilt nearly as much as I would like to. I said I kind of compare myself to a teenage boy who thinks a lot about sex but doesn't get to do it very often.

KM: [laughs.] Great analogy.

SB: [laughs.] I think about making quilts a lot, but I have a pretty full plate, we have a lot going on but it is in my head an awful lot and it comes out of my fingers on occasion. I was very, very pleased with both of these Obama quilts and I'm just thrilled to be in this particular group of quilts that will be shown in Maryland next month and it also, I think it also is kind of a metaphor that the quiltmakers in this group of about sixty range from world class to everyday to garden variety and to be hanging among all of these to me is like living in this country where we have ethnic groups, we have artists, we have various religions, we have everything. As a matter of fact in his inaugural address Barack Obama made a comment about patchwork. Did you catch that?

KM: Yes, I did.

SB: He said that our patchwork heritage of many cultures and beliefs and languages is a strength and not a weakness. I thought I love the way he said that and I thought that first earth I tried to make with more patchwork looking. I had that in my mind because I look at our country as a patchwork as well. It didn't work out but I love that he made, he used that term. I'm thinking that if the Obamas would ever have the time to find out about the exhibit I think they would love seeing it. I think the little girls would love seeing this event about their family portrayed in fiber and color and love and I think that is where all of these quilts have come from.

KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out?

SB: Someone starting to make a quilt? [Karen says hum.] Okay. Well I would just say first of all just do it. Secondly there are in my book, there are no rules. I started making quilts on my own as I said just so, I think '92 was when I made my first one and I made it for an occasion. If an occasion moves you to make a quilt then make the quilt for the occasion and that is what I did and it was successful and I delighted myself. Now on occasion when I take on a challenge I scare myself like this "DAWN" quilt scared me a little because I thought this is so important and I want to do it to honor the occasion, to honor the man, to honor the time and also to mke me happy and I was able to do all that. I would say if you want to make a quilt go for it, pick an occasion, pick an event, pick a person or just pick a fabric that sings to you and go home and do something fun with it. Cut it up, fold it up, combine it in whatever way excites you. There are no rules and I'm so glad that I didn't feel beholden to the quilt police that are important to a lot of people and that is okay but for my art, for my quilt art there is no police, there is no right, there is no wrong there is just does this work, does it make me grin and whenever I look at this Obama quilt I'm, I've made some copies and print them on little calendars. I have some little calendar pads I had leftover from another project that I do ever year and so I made myself a calendar and I'm sitting here look at it and it makes me grin and I'm thinking when I look at our president and his wife, our first lady dancing on Tuesday evening, every time I look at them all of a sudden I think about myself and I think I've got this grin on my face because I feel so good about them, I feel so grateful about the investment they are making in our world basically, not just in our country. They are sacrificing a normal life for what they feel is so important that they are willing to invest their whole family in it. I'm thinking this is going to make me a better American, this is going to make me a better world citizen and I was real happy with these two quilts that resulted in my efforts.

KM: How do you want to be remembered?

SB: I want to be remembered as being the real deal. I notice around me and I was raised around a lot of people and I see them yet today, people who are really not authentic. I want to be authentic. I want to finally be me. I've looked around and I don't see anybody else I can be but me so I just decided to go with it. I guess being authentic, no pretense, no faade, just the real Sherry.

KM: What does your family think of your quilts?

SB: I think they are very pleased. Larry, my husband, is my biggest fan. He just thinks it is wonderful. He thinks every little thing I do is wonderful and I he, he is a wonderful woodworker so we are each others fans. We both have wonderful spaces here in our home where we lived for forty-six years. We have expanded it primarily to make room for his huge workshop but he makes beautiful furniture. We built our house. We have been here forty-seven years in March. We built our house as young marrieds with two little girls and it is still standing [laughs.] so that is a good thing. We are just real happy being here at home. I'm living just right next door to a beautiful cemetery where a lot of my ancestors are married so I really do have roots here in Pendleton, Indiana, which is about half way between Indianapolis and Muncie in central Indiana. My family is very happy with my quiltmaking.

KM: Is there anything else that you would like to share that we haven't touched upon before we close?

SB: No not particularly about quilts, maybe, I think that I and I hope most people will be very careful when they think about the road ahead for our country. This is going to take us quite a while to get out of the grand mess that we are in and to be patient. We have become a country of inpatient people. We are used to pushing buttons and having things happen. This is not going to happen that way. Back in the mid-eighties probably we were traveling to California to visit our older daughter and I was sitting next to a man from England who was here for some kind of a special event in Los Angeles. He had been flying all night and he must have gotten on the plane, he must have changed planes in Indianapolis, so anyway I was sitting next to him and we got into this real philosophical talk about our country, about politics and back then I was disillusioned. I was feeling like we were a nation of selfish, self-righteous people and I was feeling embarrassed about it. He was very nice, he said, 'No, your country is great.' I said, 'Yeah, I know we are great but we are not as great as we really ought to be. We are not as great as we started out to be, as we were destined to be.' So at this point I think that we are really headed on the right path. I think we have had a whack up side the head with this financial crisis. I think the financial crisis has been a good way to get people's attention to all these other crises that we have going and I'm hopeful that people will follow the good examples that are being set up for us, the good challenges, it is going to take everybody and I guess I didn't really expect to do a political speech here but this is just the way I feel about it and it certainly does relate to my art, in particular to this particular project that is coming up. I'm really looking forward to seeing all of these quilts in Maryland next month and who knows where they will go from there and I hope that they inspire the people who get to see them.

KM: Have you seen many of the quilts in the exhibit?

SB: I've only seen them online. We have a Yahoo site and they are there and they are drop dead wonderful. I know they are always better in person.

KM: Do you have any favorites?

SB: Susan Shie has at least one and of course, I love her work and I'm hoping I can stand there and read. The text on her quilts which is just wonderful. She has even painted her garage door at her home in Wooster, Ohio and it has a lot of symbolism on it but Barack Obama is right there with a lot of other good thoughts and good images. I really am looking forward to seeing hers. The creativity of all the quilters is just amazing. There are several of us that are going for the opening so I will get to not only see a lot of all the quilts, I will get to see a lot of the artists as well so that is really enticing to me.

KM: I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to share with me. We are going to conclude our interview at 10:59.

SB: Thanks Karen.

KM: You are welcome.Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I'm conducting a Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Sherry Boram. Sherry is in Pendleton, Indiana, and I'm in Naperville, Illinois, so we are conducting this interview over the telephone. Today's date is January 23, 2009. It is now 10:12 in the morning. Sherry, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to share with me. Please tell me about your quilt "DAWN."

Sherry Boram (SB): Karen thanks a lot for wanting to hear about it. "DAWN" is the quilt that I made in response to Sue Walen's request for anyone who had made or wanted to make a quilt honoring our new president, Barack Obama. This was on the QuiltArt list that I'm a part of along with another three thousand people. Apparently sixty quilt artists responded to her over a period of two or three days. They came from all over the country and Australia and maybe some other foreign country, but it was just an amazing outpouring of people who wanted to express their feelings about the new president, the new administration and the new direction that our country is taking through their art. After Sue had her bright idea, then she proceeded to try to find someplace to display the quilts and she was lucky enough to make a contact with Montgomery Collect in Silver Spring, Maryland and the Cafritz Art Center happened to have an opening in their display schedule. These quilts, from all these sixty people all over are going to be exhibited ["President Obama: A Celebration in Art Quilts."] in the Cafritz Art Center at 150 King Street in Silver Spring, Maryland beginning February 9 I believe through March 5. The opening reception is going to be February 13, and I'm going so I'm very excited about this, provided the weather is okay. I'm hoping for cooperative weather heading to the [Washington.] D.C. area in February.

I had not made a quilt. I thought about it but when it comes to a really important quilt it takes me quite a bit of thinking time and I had some other things on my agenda so in between doing those kinds of things and everyday life I began to formulate in my head what I wanted to express in this quilt. I'm basicaly not very good at expressing my true feelings in a conversation. I don't like debating, but if I can write things down or if I have enough time to think about things and the concept that I want to express, then I can put them, indeed I can put them in a quilt or a piece of art. Of course, this was around holiday time. We have three November birthdays in my family plus we had some other projects going on. My husband and I are retired so we just have things going all the time. He is a woodworker and so those things were kind of in the way and then we have Thanksgiving and then we have Christmas and in the meantime all this stuff is going on in my head. I lost sleep over it because I have a tendency to be real creative when I get horizontal. [laughs.] Sometimes it keeps me very much awake. Sometimes it puts me to sleep but this instance I was so excited about the whole idea about our family, or about our country going a different direction that I did lose a lot of sleep.

The quilt itself was made probably during a period of a couple of weeks. I decided I wanted to depict the earth and I wanted to depict the coming of the dawn, the dawn being the Obama era. For me Obama is the idea, it is not only a man but he is representing the better instincts that are held by most of the people in the world and I think his election proved that millions of Americans get it. I thought about the qualities that I feel Barack Obama instills and these are qualities that I wanted to depict in the quilt. I'm thinking how better to do it then to have them in the sky as the Obama name comes over the horizon in the morning. This proves to be some, some difficult technical things for me to overcome. One of the things I did which I thought was pretty smart of me was to go to Google Earth. I needed a shot of the earth in the right pose. Well Google Earth enables you to do that. I got to Google Earth and then I twirled that baby around until I got it where I wanted it. I wanted the down coming up in the east. That took me a little while to figure that out because I really originally had the earth down the lower right hand corner and I thought this is not going to work so I put it in the left hand corner with the dawn coming up on the east coast of the United States just like it should, but between the sun and the earth there are the letters 'Obama' casting a shadow on the earth. That took me a little while to do plus the fact that I, the first earth that I made just didn't work out. I did it with a mosaic technique using all kinds of bits of fabric and the colors didn't work out with the sky that I had made so I set that aside and started on of course number two and that was much more satisfactory for my eye. The big qualities of hope, peace and joy were what I wanted to focus on, but also in the sky I used rubber stamps that I have put a lot of words in there. I feel like Obama represents wisdom, courage, honor, humor, which I think is really important in a leader, humility, intelligence. We hear him use the word pragmatism a lot, respect. I think Barack Obama represents a lot of balance. I think he is intelligent, represents curiosity and fairness, determination, patriotism. I think he is a generous spirit and an honorable one, so those are some of the terms that I used in the sky. The rest of it was just a matter of the broad concept and with the sun kind of coming through his name on the skyline.

KM: What are your plans for this quilt?

SB: At the present, there is only one live venue for sure, but there are others possibly in the future. I think there might be a book about this and I have heard that there will be at least one magazine article, Quilter's Newsletter magazine article about it. I think it will generate a lot of interest. First of all, it is not the only Obama quilting project going. I know that there are others. This particular one will be shown in Montgomery County, Maryland is going to be in a very liberal, progressive part of the district area and so I have a feeling that there might be some people that might be interested in buying quilts that are exhibited. There will be a lot of quilts that will be very affordable, mine included. There will be some that are made by world class quilters which will be very, much larger price tag so I don't know. I would be happy for mine to go out to someone who feels like it fits in with their spirit. When I made it and usually when I make quilts I release them. I either give them away or donate them or I have sold a few and that's just fine with me. I have it in my heart so if it is gone I still have it. One of my, I just thought of another technical problem I had was trying to figure out what kind of, how to make that glow from the sun come through the 'Obama' text on the horizon. I tried several things in little samples and what I finally ended up using was PearlEx gold powder and I just rubbed it on with my finger and it is hard to see in an image how much it sparkles but in real life it sparkles really well and I was very pleased. I put a sealer on it so I think it will hold up really well. This is the first quilt that I didn't want a binding on so I used a facing. I didn't want any trim around the edge. I just wanted it out there in space. The binding works fine, I've done a lot of sewing through my lifetime up close so I knew how to make bindings, I know how to make facing, or I knew how to make a facing instead of a binding so I'm very happy with that. This particular quilt I wanted quite a bit of loft in the earth part. I used wool batting which I just love but I didn't have enough for the whole quilt so the earth part is done individually with wool batting and then I put it over the whole thing with cotton batting. Other than that, I think I had a pretty easy time of it. I like to use rubber stamps and that is how I did the large and the small text and then I just cut out the 'Obama' letters out of some beautiful hand painted fabric from Jeanette's Fabrics to Dye For and as far as where it goes it will just go where ever it needs to go. I'm going to trust the universe.

KM: You made another Obama quilt called "On That Day," tell me about it.

SB: Yes, that one was a smaller one, a more delicate looking one. Neither of these quilts have the image of Obama and neither of them are using red, white and blue. I wanted to depart from that because I feel that this is much larger than the United States which is represented usually by red, white and blue. On the day of the election and we had voted in advance because we were going to be gone for several weeks and in case we didn't get back in time I wanted to make sure my vote was in there. We did get back on Sunday because we were ready to come home, number one and number two I wanted to be home so that I could be right here to watch everything. I didn't have to leave the house all day long, however I went out in the yard and I picked up several leaves off of one of my favorite trees in my yard and they were turning nice colors and I brought them in and stuck them in an old phone book and really kind of forgot about it. I remember thinking at the time this is such a historic day to be picking up leaves and sometimes I do that, I will pick up something from nature, from a historic place or at a historic time and here I had those leaves. About a week later, and this was even before I think I knew about this call for Obama quilts I found the leaves and I thought I really ought to do something with these and I made photo copy on fabric. I have a real, real accurate image of these fragile, dry crumbling leaves which I still have. I still want to save. After I finished the "DAWN" quilt I thought I would really like to make another one about nature and history and about my place in all of this. I decided to make a quilt using these leaves. It is an oval quilt. It is done on silk fabric so it is very delicate, kind of delicate looking and kind of pale and gentle looking. I put the leaves with stems in towards the center in an oval shape and then I put an image of the earth in the center. [coughs.] I decided to use images of all the state quilts, excuse me all the state flags and so they are in the oval as well. Around the edge with no color change with this pale off white silk I stamped text and the text said, 'On this day Barack Obama was elected President of the United States' and then farther around I put, 'On this day I picked these leaves off the ground in my lawn in Indiana' and then farther around it says, 'On this day hope returns.' At the bottom has the date '11-04-09.' That was a real pleasant experience. I didn't agonize over that one, that went together pretty well but it pretty much embodied the feeling I have about the global importance of this event.

I look at art as a spiritual practice. As a matter of fact, most of the time I'm under the radar when I make quilts. I do them for me. I used to make them because they were, because I was interested in making something that I thought was pretty, but making pretty quilts just for the sake of making pretty quilts has lost its appeal for me I want to make quilts with meaning. I've made several of them with meaning. Some of them are really not pretty at all. Some turned out pretty nice looking but I have ideas for a lot more because I feel like I can express who I really am in my art, even better than how I express myself in words. This little secret about me is being kept from most of my friends and family, I was raised Republican and my feeling is that one of the problems that we have in our country is that politics has been denied as a subject of polite conversation. I think we need to talk about politics. I think we also need to have dialogue about religion. [takes a drink.] Anyway, I went through a period of really thinking real hard about my political leanings. I didn't know what that meant when I was growing up because I pretty much didn't have a chance to have any original ideas. I've been rootie kazootie with my [laughs.] original ideas in my later years. I've didn't even start making quilts until I was a grandmother and now I'm making some that might be considered controversial so I'm really in my form here being controversial. Back to the political feelings about this culture, I began to think about what qualities I could use to describe the conservative political feelings and they didn't match mine and so I kind of moved into being an independent progressive and so here I am and there probably be more progressive quilts coming out of these fingers.

KM: Do you have plans to make more Obama quilts?

SB: You know I just might. I really wanted, if I had more time I wanted to make one picturing four pairs of shoes, one for each of the four in the Obama family because I think that this family, the focus on this family and the way they are parenting these two little girls is so important and I'm hoping that it catches on and people will be inspired by their example of parenting. I wanted to, I just think what a real personal part of them, I had seen somewhere I had seen pictures of Barack Obama's shoe bottoms with holes in them [coughs.] excuse me and that says an awful lot about a man. I heard an interview with Michelle talking about his holey shoes and I'm thinking he is just so focused on his dreams for this country and that he is not really paying attention to the bottom [laughs.] of his shoes which I think is in sharp contrast with a lot of our leaders and a lot of our idols in this country. [coughs.]

KM: I can't remember a president inspiring so much art. Why do you think so many people were drawn to making quilts about Obama?

SB: I don't know. I tell you his smile inspires me as much as his message does. It reminds me of the Dalai Lama and of Bishop Tutu. Both men who carry enormous burdens of their people but they are all three men that can smile and they can grin and they can even guffaw and under such conditions that this gives me a lot of hope and it gives me a lot of peace and a lot of joy and I don't know I think probably there are a lot of quilters out there like me who like to express their deepest feelings in their art and I don't know, its just one of those things. Another quilt I thought I might do when I was in the process of making these two. When I finally get a quilt going and I'm through the agony of figuring out what I want to do, designing it and managing all the technical problems then in the process of actually making it, which is the fun part my mind is going on to the next one. I'm like a maniac and I'm thinking, 'Oh, if I could only make one of his face and he is green, just like the green man holding the earth in his hands with leaves coming out around [laughs.] his face.' Last night I saw a commercial on television for oh, what's that clay head that you put seed in?

KM: Oh the Chia. [pause,]

SB: Yeah, they have a Chia Pet know, an Obama Chia Pet.

KM: Oh my goodness.

SB: [laughs.] I guess he inspires all kinds of doodads and marketing and art and I guess as long as he is inspiring that is a good thing. I don't think I want a Chia Pet. I think I'm just perfectly happy with him being just where he is, just as he is even though I might make more quilts I don't know.

KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why?

SB: I'm drawn to some that are very controlled, very linear, very perfect and then the opposite. I like Susan Shie's so much. I like Terrie Mangat so much and I've had classes with both of them and I've come away without really ever finishing anything that I've started in those classes and I realized that is just not me, I can't do that kind of work although I would love to do that loose free wheeling kind of art. Well you've seen my postcards Karen and you know how they are. [laughs.] I just can't help myself. I just have to do what I have to do. I certainly do admire the controlled, the precise quilts of artists like--oh I can't think of anybody right now. If I see them I would recognize them.

KM: You can fill it in later if it occurs to you. Not a problem.

SB: Another thing about the two classes that I took with Terrie and Susan, I realized when I came away that I wasn't going there to learn how to make their quilts. I think I just wanted to be around their spirit. I wanted to hear how they created, I wanted to feel that energy, I wanted to see it in action and both of the times that I spent with both of them I felt like I had come away with winning the prize that I had really gotten everything I wanted. Although like I said my work doesn't really reflect that. I've done a little bit of Susan's 'chicken stitches', I've done quite a bit of beading, I've gotten away from it a bit but I have enjoyed painting with Setacolor paints. I've surprised myself really that I can do it. The first time I tried it we were in a camper in the Blue Ridge area of the western part of Virginia and I had signed up for a black and white challenge for Anne Copeland's group [Fiberarts Connection of Southern California.] and I thought how am I going to do this and I happened to take in my small little stash of quilting materials, art materials to our RV I had a jar of black paint, I had some prepared for dyeing fabrics, I had some ornamental yarns, I had beads and I made a quilt that turned out really well and I was so surprised because I didn't know I could do it. Painting to me is fun. I like to do it because it is fast. It is almost instant gratification. I don't piece anymore. I don't do a lot of appliqu, if I do it is raw edge or just I like to do a lot of couching of decorative yarns so I do that a lot around the edges of raw edge appliqu that I do. I like to stitch. I like to do stitching lines that shadow that echo and that is kind of what I did in the earth image that I did on the "DAWN" quilt and I vary them, the stitching is not in measured rows but it's varied, it kind of gives the idea of the proper topography of the land, give it some shape and I really like doing that and I used to do that just with a presser foot and then all of a sudden I realized that people were doing that with a walking foot [laughs.] and it just makes it so much easier and so much more successful. I like to do a lot of that and um I guess probably I've got my stye and I'm just going to stick at it although I do really like the intricacies of quilters who have very, very, or have the opposite of free wheeling styles and then of course I like those free wheelers.

KM: Do you think of yourself as an artist or a quiltmaker or do you make a distinction?

SB: I think we are all artists I just think it takes a little bit longer for some of us to call ourselves that because it has been kind of [pause.] an elitist term maybe and then also as everybody as a child gets told that you can't do this, you can't do that, your not very successful of this and that. It took me a while to call myself an artist, but yeah I'm an artist. I'm a quilter and I'm comfortable with those terms. I grew up in a family of musicians so I didn't have a lot of opportunity to create art. There were not raw materials around that I would have loved to have had. I did have one success as a child, one long running success, my grandmother liked my duck so I would draw ducks and I would sell them and she would pay me a nickel for my ducks [laughs.] so that was wonderful. My art life when I was a kid was all about the ducks and then when I was in school art class was my favorite class of course and there was a student a year older than me who was an extraordinary artist and the art teacher recognized that and she would bring Susan around to all of the classes to show her art work and I was so inspired. One time, I don't know whether the whole class did this or not but we were doing collages, I mean if you can call them collages back in the mid-forties, I guess you could but we did little Christmas collages and I had probably gotten some foil off--I peeled it off of chewing gum wrapper which took some patience as an eight year old, here I peeled this off and I cut a circle and I scotch taped it in the sky as the moon. I don't know, whether I meant the star, but it was in this manger scene with cotton and with the foil and with the tape. I still have it and of course it has yellowed but there it is. So it is with the cotton and the foil and I really, really valued that little piece of art and I still do. I also [laughs.] for some reason or other I took a pair of scissors one day back in the third grade and I thought I think I will make myself a pair of paper scissors. I cut out the two parts of the scissors and I figured out a way to hook them together so they would move, and so that was really neat. I like making things. Not just, I'm not a picture painter and I'm not a, I like multi-media kind of things so um, those two things appeal to me a lot and I like the variety of things that I use on my quilts, so I like the texture, I like the variety of the fabrics, I like the variety of yarns. I've got all kinds of yarns and decorative fibers, a lot of them came from a cousin who was a long time weaver and she has given me a lot of things to use. I do have quite a selection and I like using them. The hand dyed fabrics that I find at quilt shows I like to buy. Some of them are a little expensive but when I was using the painted metallic painted fabric for the Obama effect on the "DAWN" quilt I realized this is not expensive at all. I'm using little bits and parts of it and this really was exactly the right fabric in my mind's eye for this particular quilt because it kind of gave it a glow. I was really, really pleased with the way that turned out. Back to your question, yeah, I'm an artist and I'm a quilter. I'm a whole lot of things and those are two important things in my life and I once told somebody that they said do you quilt a lot and I said I don't get to quilt nearly as much as I would like to. I said I kind of compare myself to a teenage boy who thinks a lot about sex but doesn't get to do it very often.

KM: [laughs.] Great analogy.

SB: [laughs.] I think about making quilts a lot, but I have a pretty full plate, we have a lot going on but it is in my head an awful lot and it comes out of my fingers on occasion. I was very, very pleased with both of these Obama quilts and I'm just thrilled to be in this particular group of quilts that will be shown in Maryland next month and it also, I think it also is kind of a metaphor that the quiltmakers in this group of about sixty range from world class to everyday to garden variety and to be hanging among all of these to me is like living in this country where we have ethnic groups, we have artists, we have various religions, we have everything. As a matter of fact in his inaugural address Barack Obama made a comment about patchwork. Did you catch that?

KM: Yes, I did.

SB: He said that our patchwork heritage of many cultures and beliefs and languages is a strength and not a weakness. I thought I love the way he said that and I thought that first earth I tried to make with more patchwork looking. I had that in my mind because I look at our country as a patchwork as well. It didn't work out but I love that he made, he used that term. I'm thinking that if the Obamas would ever have the time to find out about the exhibit I think they would love seeing it. I think the little girls would love seeing this event about their family portrayed in fiber and color and love and I think that is where all of these quilts have come from.

KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out?

SB: Someone starting to make a quilt? [Karen says hum.] Okay. Well I would just say first of all just do it. Secondly there are in my book, there are no rules. I started making quilts on my own as I said just so, I think '92 was when I made my first one and I made it for an occasion. If an occasion moves you to make a quilt then make the quilt for the occasion and that is what I did and it was successful and I delighted myself. Now on occasion when I take on a challenge I scare myself like this "DAWN" quilt scared me a little because I thought this is so important and I want to do it to honor the occasion, to honor the man, to honor the time and also to make me happy and I was able to do all that. I would say if you want to make a quilt go for it, pick an occasion, pick an event, pick a person or just pick a fabric that sings to you and go home and do something fun with it. Cut it up, fold it up, combine it in whatever way excites you. There are no rules and I'm so glad that I didn't feel beholden to the quilt police that are important to a lot of people and that is okay but for my art, for my quilt art there is no police, there is no right, there is no wrong there is just does this work, does it make me grin and whenever I look at this Obama quilt I'm, I've made some copies and print them on little calendars. I have some little calendar pads I had leftover from another project that I do ever year and so I made myself a calendar and I'm sitting here look at it and it makes me grin and I'm thinking when I look at our president and his wife, our first lady dancing on Tuesday evening, every time I look at them all of a sudden I think about myself and I think I've got this grin on my face because I feel so good about them, I feel so grateful about the investment they are making in our world basically, not just in our country. They are sacrificing a normal life for what they feel is so important that they are willing to invest their whole family in it. I'm thinking this is going to make me a better American, this is going to make me a better world citizen and I was real happy with these two quilts that resulted in my efforts.

KM: How do you want to be remembered?

SB: I want to be remembered as being the real deal. I notice around me and I was raised around a lot of people and I see them yet today, people who are really not authentic. I want to be authentic. I want to finally be me. I've looked around and I don't see anybody else I can be but me so I just decided to go with it. I guess being authentic, no pretense, no faade, just the real Sherry.

KM: What does your family think of your quilts?

SB: I think they are very pleased. Larry, my husband, is my biggest fan. He just thinks it is wonderful. He thinks every little thing I do is wonderful and I he, he is a wonderful woodworker so we ar each others fans. We both have wonderful spaces here in our home where we lived for forty-six years. We have expanded it primarily to make room for his huge workshop but he makes beautiful furniture. We built our house. We have been here forty-seven years in March. We built our house as young marrieds with two little girls and it is still standing [laughs.] so that is a good thing. We are just real happy being here at home. I'm living just right next door to a beautiful cemetery where a lot of my ancestors are married so I really do have roots here in Pendleton, Indiana, which is about half way between Indianapolis and Muncie in central Indiana. My family is very happy with my quiltmaking.

KM: Is there anything else that you would like to share that we haven't touched upon before we close?

SB: No not particularly about quilts, maybe, I think that I and I hope most people will be very careful when they think about the road ahead for our country. This is going to take us quite a while to get out of the grand mess that we are in and to be patient. We have become a country of inpatient people. We are used to pushing buttons and having things happen. This is not going to happen that way. Back in the mid-eighties probably we were traveling to California to visit our older daughter and I was sitting next to a man from England who was here for some kind of a special event in Los Angeles. He had been flying all night and he must have gotten on the plane, he must have changed planes in Indianapolis, so anyway I was sitting next to him and we got into this real philosophical talk about our country, about politics and back then I was disillusioned. I was feeling like we were a nation of selfish, self-righteous people and I was feeling embarrassed about it. He was very nice, he said, 'No, your country is great.' I said, 'Yeah, I know we are great but we are not as great as we really ought to be. We are not as great as we started out to be, as we were destined to be.' So at this point I think that we are really headed on the right path. I think we have had a whack up side the head with this financial crisis. I think the financial crisis has been a good way to get people's attention to all these other crises that we have going and I'm hopeful that people will follow the good examples that are being set up for us, the good challenges, it is going to take everybody and I guess I didn't really expect to do a political speech here but this is just the way I feel about it and it certainly does relate to my art, in particular to this particular project that is coming up. I'm really looking forward to seeing all of these quilts in Maryland next month and who knows where they will go from there and I hope that they inspire the people who get to see them.

KM: Have you seen many of the quilts in the exhibit?

SB: I've only seen them online. We have a Yahoo site and they are there and they are drop dead wonderful. I know they are always better in person.

KM: Do you have any favorites?

SB: Susan Shie has at least one and of course, I love her work and I'm hoping I can stand there and read. The text on her quilts which is just wonderful. She has even painted her garage door at her home in Wooster, Ohio and it has a lot of symbolism on it but Barack Obama is right there with a lot of other good thoughts and good images. I really am looking forward to seeing hers. The creativity of all the quilters is just amazing. There are several of us that are going for the opening so I will get to not only see a lot of all the quilts, I will get to see a lot of the artists as well so that is really enticing to me.

KM: I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to share with me. We are going to conclude our interview at 10:59.

SB: Thanks Karen.

KM: You are welcome.