Interview with Zak Foster

EP: So let's just jump right in with this very first question: tell me about your interest in quiltmaking and how you got started making quilts.

ZF: Yeah, you know, I think for a long time I was an artist in search of quilting. You know, I grew up in North Carolina. And North Carolina, as you know, has a long tradition of producing textiles, right? Right up into the eighties and kind of mid-eighties, it kind of petered out. So I grew up surrounded in this landscape of textiles, but I didn't really have a personal connection. I know that my mom had a sewing machine when I grew up, but I didn't really see it being used that much. My first sewing memory was with her mom, who is now a hundred and four years old, still kickin' and wonderful. And I remember going to her house once and seeing that she was making a dress and being so fascinated. I was probably like five years old or so, being so fascinated with pattern paper, clothing pattern, paper like that, this brown, thin... Just so fragile. And I'm like, oh, sewing is so mysterious, you know, like how do we take these raw materials and make something? But then I didn't do anything with fabric. Hmmm... for about twenty, twenty five years. I do a lot of drawing. I tried painting, screen printing, lithographs, I mean all kinds of stuff. Right? And it seemed like I kind of bounced from one to the other for the longest while. And then one day, about six or seven years ago now, my friends started having their first kids, you know? And so I was like, "OK, this is a time for me to try to make a quilt again". I had made one in college. It didn't line up all perfect and square so I thought was a total failure. And I just tossed it the side, and we come back to that quilt in a little bit if you want. But I didn't quilt between college and five or seven years ago. I didn't quilt for nearly a decade and I picked it back up with baby quilts and I've been hooked ever since, so that's, kind of... I didn't learn from anybody, my family, really, I... Well, that's not true, so I did learn a lot on YouTube. But my partner's mamaw in eastern Tennessee was a big time quilter. And so I learned the basics online. But every holiday when we'd come home for Thanksgiving, especially, we would sit and talk about like, oh, how do you do your binding? She does that East Appalachian kind of thing where you, like, roll the back up over the top.

EP: Oh, yeah.

ZF: And those little details I remember one time coming home from Thanksgiving Day, part of our family tradition is going to the movies after the big meal. Mamaw never did. She stayed home to clean the kitchen. Like, I don't know how you get to cook the meal and get stuck in the kitchen...

EP: Yeah, that's a raw deal.

ZF: But Mamaw, I guess she was fine with it. She got to see her grandbabies. But I came back from the movies that night and she was sitting at the kitchen table with this quilt of mine that I brought to work on and she was just sewing that binding, and I treasure that quilt because I can look at those stitches and know those aren't those aren't my stitches. Bless her heart, her eyes at that time weren't the best, but it's like it's her signature there in the quilt. I just, I treasure it's a beautiful thing.

EP: Helping with binding really is... That's an that's an act of love for sure. Always my least favorite part. But so... before you started quilting, did you have sort of a notion or idea about quilts and who made quilts? I mean, did you, did that, do you have any preconceived ideas about that or was it just something that was, you did once, you thought "meh" or it was a continually evolving idea?

ZF: I think, OK, so if if I'm being honest, the very first quilt I ever made was a four square patch made in the third grade because we had, like Laura Ingalls Wilder day at school. We just read Little House on the Prairie. I'm like, oh, we're going to these activities. So Zach made him a little four square patch that turned into a pillow. And that was cute. But I think I didn't go any further, my third grade self, because in my mind, quilts were often like, poofy. I'm not that, well, I don't say nothing about polyester fill, but it was not the best for the planet. But if you like your quilts poofy, that's fine. But that was the image I had in my mind. And so it took a long time for me to realize, oh, there's other things you can fill quilts with.

EP: Sure.

ZF: I also thought quilts had to be patterned, right? But now we have seen in the last many, many years that there's many different ways to be a quilt. And I'm thankful for that.

EP: Yeah, that's that is so true. There are so many ways to be a quilt. And you mentioned you learned a little bit with with Memaw, and a little bit on YouTube. How how did you really come to start making quilts, and what were you looking at in those early days to get a sense of the process?

ZF: In the early days, I was just trying to find patterns that I liked, you know, I would basically just like replicate some tried and true Monkey Wrench or something, you know, Pinwheel. My very first quilt I saw to fruition all the way through from patching to binding was a Pinwheel quilt. But some things have held in common from that first baby quilt because I sourced a lot of that fabric from remnants and salvage and things like that. Using repurposed materials is still... ninety-nine percent of what I use when I work now, but in the beginning I was like, "let me play by the rules". I wanted to learn the rules. And learn the techniques. And I just I made really pretty precise all-my-corners-met kind of quilt. And then it didn't take too long before I discovered the quilts of Gee's Bend. And they obviously continue to have... For folks that are already familiar with my work, continue to have an influence on on my work and on my approach. And a question I have in my mind that remains unresolved--and if anybody out there has thought so, I'm on a search to figure this out--but, you know, there is there is the issue, in my mind at least, about appropriating quilts that have come out of that part of Alabama. And it's weird for me as a white male in this field to be saying, like, "oh, I love these. These quilts are beautiful". And how do we, how do I, pay homage and respect to that tradition and the latitude that those women (and one man, as far as I know) opened up with their design approaches, how do I pay respect and homage to that without appropriating it? That's one thing that I think of quite a bit. But when I saw those quilts from Gee's Bend, I was like: here we go. There's some breathing room in this art form. And I think especially if I had to put my finger on one quilter specifically is Irene Williams, she's my spiritual quilting grandmother, I would like to think, if she'd have me. She worked a lot in solitude. She worked a lot by herself, not as communal as some of the other ladies. And she was just like, "I'm going to do what I want to do". Like she's... One of my favorite quilts of hers are two basketball jerseys that she cut up the side seams, right? There's another one there where she took a bright orange poncho and just, like, sewed the hood down flat. She even, like, try to, like, cut the fabric out. She just told the hood down. I love the, the space that she had around her work to create and so... So when I saw her work, I'm like, "yeah, there's something fun we can do here with this". And so I've been kind of searching ever since. Like what? What else can we do with this art form?

EP: Sure. That's a that's a great question and a great journey. And I think a lot of people, maybe struggle a little bit with that notion of Gee's Bend and appropriation? And I think in the early days, particularly of the Modern Quilt movement, there was a lot of.. a little bit of wrestling with that, maybe acknowledged or unacknowledged, so I'm really interested to hear you talk about that. So your early quilts were really precise. How would you describe your work now? I mean, are you... You mentioned you're a high school teacher, so you're not quilting full time all the time.

ZF: It feels like it sometimes. Yeah.

EP: So, yeah. How would you describe the work that you make now and where does that, "where does it end up" is really my favorite question about quilts. Like do you keep them, do you sell them, why are you doing it and what and what are you making? That's a big question. Yeah.

ZF: Why am I doing it? I can't think of a better way to spend my time. It's probably the honest answer, right? I really enjoy finding ways to bring new life to fabric and textiles. Another artist I really admire is Tijay Mohammed, who talks about the hopefulness of discarded objects. And I just love that. I think he thinks of it in terms mostly of people who get overlooked in the margins of society, which is definitely something on my mind. But I think you can also think of it on a more tangible level, which is just... I see here in Brooklyn especially, I just see, like clothes thrown out in the street like they're trash, and if we were just to wind the clock back one hundred, one hundred fifty years, cloth is one of the most valuable things a person could have because it took so much labor to make that cloth. So to see it just so... produced in such a mass fashion and then just so easily discarded, something that's just really bothersome to me on a personal level. So I love, I find a lot of gratification in giving new life and giving them a little something they didn't have in their initial incarnation. So that's that's that's a lot of my starting points for my work now is the fabrics themselves, what I run across, what I find. I love... Lately I've been making a few memorial quilts, memory quilts. I love thinking about the person that's being honored in this, especially with their clothing and what that means. Whether I knew the person or not. I like to believe that you can tell something from somebody's clothes. You know, even if you didn't know them, like if you found the shirt that I'm wearing now, a little patch on the elbow, you're like, "oh, he never, like, pushed the sleeves up all the way. He's leaning on it and got...". Or I just was recently deconstructing a shirt that somebody gave me and there was, in the front shirt pocket, there's like a bunch of little like, mm, like little pieces of like soil and leaf matter and things like that, like they put something natural in their pocket, someone. I like to imagine this person walking through the woods or something like that. But I like starting with that point of inspiration, the fabric being the point of inspiration and going from there. And it's important to me to remain open and sensitive to that process. I, like a lot of improv quilters, rarely have an idea of where the project's going when I start. And quilting has taught me. I'm so thankful for this lesson because qolton has taught me that sensitivity is a virtue. I think for a long time I gave myself a hard time for being too sensitive to loud noises and strong smells and lots of people in a room, that kind of thing.

EP: Sure.

ZF: But now I realize that the other side of that same coin is when I look at my design wall and I can see, OK, here's some fabric and here's some fabric. But what's the difference if I do this right and if that is what Ann Truitt calls it a "just noticeable difference". Right? Like there is a difference there. Right? And what is it? And it's that sensitivity that sometimes is not my best friend, but sometimes it's my best friend that helped me see the difference. And so quilting has helped me accept that about myself as a person and also realize that that's a virtue and a strength that I have as an artist. And so I'm very thankful for that. So being open to the process, starting with some fabric that has meaning and has some kind of substance in life of its own, being open to that, influencing the process, I would say informs almost all the pieces I make now.

EP: That's a fantastic answer, so I'm going to... I'm skipping ahead slightly: we typically ask folks to bring a touchstone quilt or sometimes it's more than one. Do you want to share one quilt? Do you feel like you is a touchstone for your says something about your your work?

ZF: Yeah, sure. Let's start with this one.

EP: Oh, perfect.

ZF: This is not... I'm just going to say this is not the most beautiful quilt I've ever made, but it's important for a reason because I can tell you a story about it.

EP: Oh, those are the best ones.

ZF: So you can edit all this part out, I'm sure. Right.

EP: Sure. Even though this is the hanging process is equally fascinating to me.

ZF: Well, yeah. Folks want to see all kinds of stuff. Yeah. All right. How's that look to you.

EP: That's great.

ZF: Pretty good? OK, yeah.

ZF: So this is a quilt... Four years ago, 2016, like a lot of folks, like a little over half the country, I was really shocked at the way the 2016 election turned out. The president and I just don't agree on a lot of things. And so after he won the Electoral College in 2016, I just felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me, a little bit lost at sea. So I didn't sew for a long time, for several months and this is, what you see behind me is the first full size quilt I made after he was elected. So I had my little time of hibernation. I was laying low. I'm in the school. And this was one of the quilts that --I have a group of quilts, I have an approach maybe that I call "oracle quilting" because I either intentionally start with the question and I approach the fabric with that, or sometimes I just come and sit down, and sew. And then something, some kind of message comes through. It's the latter one that happened with this quilt, because I didn't sit down with any design in mind other than just like "I'm going to sew some colors I like together. And that's going to make me a little happier by the end of the day than I was in the morning." And that was that was my goal. But I did that and I made this quilt and then I stepped back and looked at it on my design wall. And I mean, I don't think it's too grandiose to say I had a vision of the future when I when I saw it, right? It was this idea that even though we can't see our way clear into the future, it's still there. Right? And the future can still be bright. And so in my mind, what I saw when I look at this quilt, where all these orange squares like sunlight pouring in through a window so that all we have to do when we need that access to that new future is just 1), give it time, the time as a magic ingredient. And then, 2), we just got to step into it. Right? And so every time I look at this quilt, I see the presence of something better, more ideal than what we have now. That might not be immediately sensible, detectable, but it is there. And so I think that I look at this quilt and it brings me some comfort.

EP: Yeah, that's... It's really timely. I'll say that we are recording this on the day when we are awaiting news of of the 2020 election. So certainly this notion of the future and unknown is weighing heavily on my mind, at least.

ZF: So I think it's safe to say for a lot of us.

EP: Exactly. Yeah. So you mentioned that this quilt was a comfort. Have you used, quiltmaking in the past to get through other difficult times?

ZF: Yeah, let's go back one. Let me put it...

EP: Perfect. All right. We're jumping all over.

ZF: OK, so this quilt I, like I mentioned, didn't sew much at all when when the president was first elected in 2016. But I could bring myself to sew small projects and I remember, it was January 2017. I had read this beautiful essay by Barbara Kingsolver. I love her. And she had written this one back in the 90's when Bush won. And she was talking about how the flag is so often viewed or associated with one political party, viewed with Republicans, with conservatives, when in reality both parties have patriots, both parties have Americans. Both parties have people who are loyal to the country. And so she was making the argument that Democrats on the left need to reclaim the flag as one of their symbols as well. And so my response to reading that essay was to get on an online merchandise retailer whose name I won't say on this... And order this flag, just 100% polyester made in China. And I'm like, I was just about to click a button when I was like, "Zak, what are you doing? You know how to sew." It's like I'd forgotten because I hadn't even made that other quilt that I'm showed you a second ago. I hadn't done anything in months. And so I sat down and I made this flag right here. From there, I started having these responses to the fire of the day, you know, whatever news item there was, I would just, I would process it by making patches here. So you can see here Elizabeth Warren standing her ground, persisting. This came from an uncle of mine. A great American takes all of us. You know something... So many things, so many memories. It's kind of like to me, a quilty newspaper or a quilted photo album.

EP: Yeah, kind of time capsule. A little bit. Yeah.

ZF: And so I stopped at the first hundred days. And so I took all the pieces I made after the first hundred days of his presidency and put them together in this "O America" quilt as a way of just saying, "come on folks we can do it. We just got to do it together.".

EP: Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

ZF: And this is my favorite part. So this flag, I knew I wanted to use it. I love this flag. It's got a lot of good mojo now because I've used it so often. I've taken it to protest and rallies and marches, all kinds of stuff. So I don't want to permanently incorporate it. So it is safety pinned and there's this panel underneath that holds that space.

EP: I love that.

ZF: Right?

EP: Yeah. It's got a designated place to come back to. And also still the message that the flags out there doing its work.

ZF: Doing it's work. Yeah, exactly.

EP: It's great. So this is a fairly large quilt. I don't know how far past the frame it extends, and you live in Brooklyn.

ZF: A little bit up, a little bit down.

EP: OK, maybe you live in a small space. I'm going to I'm going to leap to assume, where... Can you describe the place where you make or your studio?

ZF: Yeah. So I call it my studio, but in reality if you read between the lines, it's just my eat-in kitchen. I'm looking at it now, I would show you, but it's a disaster because I'm in the middle of like five, different projects right now. But one of the reasons we moved into this particular apartment is I have a very generous partner who says, OK, this partner, this, this apartment has an eat-in kitchen. That'll be a good space for you to work. Because it's just a one bedroom. We really got great. And so in that space is my cutting slash ironing table and my little sewing table. And on the back wall, I finally got the design wall that people love to have. And having a design wall does make a difference. Right? Like, there is a beautiful thing about being able to step back twenty feet and just see everything smaller.

EP: Sure, yeah.

ZF: So it was helpful for me to have. I'm constantly trying not to accumulate materials, but it's hard because everything I see I want to salvage and give new life to whether that's fabric, or I'm also into natural dyeing. And so I have a lot of flowers and barks and things in there sittin around. But I try my best stay on top of the mess and try not to be a hoarder. And then when it gets too much I just start passing it along. You know, or trying to, at least.

EP: Yeah, that's a it's a tricky balance between sort of hoarding and collecting what seems useful. And I think when you have an interest in -- I have a real interest in 'stuff; which I think people think is maybe a little consumerism-y. But I really just think that objects have such delightful... It's hard, it's hard to walk that line between accumulation and use. Definitely, for sure.

ZF: You know, one rule of thumb, that I don't follow, my partner is better at it than I am. But he loves books and so he tries to, if he brings a book into the house, one goes out the house,.

EP: The one in, one out. It's so good in theory. I.

ZF: It's a great theory, yeah, we should try it sometime maybe.

EP: Yeah. I every every year. I think this is going to be my one in, one out year and it's usually like five in, sometimes something goes out, you know.

ZF: Maybe, just maybe it's just easier to move to a bigger space.

EP: I think the one in, one out is me moving out of my house and moving into a larger space there.

EP: I'll can work on that. So. So, yeah, it sounds like you're, you live with the work and you kind of balance your space. How how do you balance your time?

ZF: Oh, you know, it's tough with a full time job. Yeah, it really is. It's been a little bit easier in the last several months because so much of my time has been spent working from home, doing remote education. So between classes, it's a lot easier, just like whip out a quilt and a little work done. Here in New York we have gone back and I'm one of the teachers who goes back in the building every day. So that fun time came to an end, unfortunately. So I, I try my best. And that usually looks like, in the evenings I get about a half hour to an hour of time to work. Usually on the weekends I get to devote one whole day, usually it's Sunday to sewing projects, to really make some good headway. And I try to get to a point where throughout the rest of the week I can just do like the production aspect. So like Sunday it tends to be my big creative, big vision day. I make a plan for the week so that on Monday through Friday I just sit there and crank out a little piece I need for the following Sunday when I go back to the bigger steps again.

EP: Do you do you feel like your life as a teacher, and your life as a quiltmaker, intersect in any way, either in sort of the skills you use or like do your students know about your quilts?

ZF: My students do know about my quilts because I take them in from time to time to show them. Do they intersect?

EP: It's fine if they don't, I'm just curious.

ZF: You know, but let's see if we can find a way where the Venn diagram overlaps, I do think... In the sense that my quilts are often... Contain a message, they teach in that sense, right, they carry some kind of meaning. I think there's something there that we could we could hang our hats on. I also think that quilting has.. I'm also into fermentation. So quilting and fermentation both have shown me that time is a magic ingredient. Like I said a moment ago, that things happen that can only happen if given time. And I think teaching would also fall in that category. Like you can't force a human, a student in your class to perform well on a certain day, no matter how how well you set them up for success. But one hopes that over the course of your time together, your course of nine months together, that you can move them from here to here. We're patient. We do our best. We wait and see.

EP: Yeah, I think that's a great, that's those are great places for the Venn diagram to overlap for sure. Let's see. I have so many questions I want to ask. Do you... I'm curious if you feel like you work in a in a community of quilters. I mean, I think I first found out about your work as part of the 43 for 43 project, which is a community project. Do you feel like you are working in a community and do you do you enjoy that, any kind of collaborative work or or do you take sort of a head down solo approach? Is this where you feel more comfortable?

ZF: You know, it's one foot in and one foot out, like it feels like, for folks who know the areas, like when you go to Carowinds in North Carolina, South Carolina, you get to straddle the state line. You know, left foot in North Carolina, right foot in South Carolina. I value strongly community, and I think at this point in my life, most of that is through social media. Which can also be a challenging thing for me at times, I mean, those who follow me online will know that I post something, sometimes I'll get on like a daily kick and sometimes I don't post for a couple of weeks or a couple of months if we're honest. And it can be tough because there are times when when I'm in my darker days and I'm scrolling through Instagram like "how people are doing such good work and I am wasting my life", you know, that goes through the noggin. And I never want to I never want my work to be that for somebody else. So I'm like "ahh, no more social media!". But then I start missing my friends and I want to see what people are doing. So then I come back, you know, so it's an ebb and flow thing. I do like collaboration. In fact, this quilt behind me, Heidi Parkes, helped me, and Heidi Parkse also interviewed with you all at one point. And she helped me do a lot of this embroidery. We kind of did like a crazy quilt Americana type thing. I'm working on a postal collaboration right now with the local textile artist and we are working on the square that we just mailed back and forth. And we just add a little section and then when it gets too big for an envelope, we just start over. You know, I would like to do more collaborations because I love that. The 43 for 43 project--just a quick 10 seconds for folks who don't know it, there were forty three teaching students, college students, in Mexico and in 2014, 2016, Minutes that disappeared one night they were booked and disappeared. And so folks down to Mexico for a long time been trying to raise awareness about, hey, where are these folks? We want them back. You know, the government will tell me that.

ZF: And so when I was down there a few years ago, I was just so struck and impressed by how hard people were working to make sure these people were remembered and the justice was found for them that when I came back--and I should say that I was struck when I went down to Mexico on that particular trip that, when I learned what the number forty three meant, because you saw '43' everywhere, it was like graffiti on walls and scratched on restaurant tables. When I realized what 43 meant, I had this, this this vague memory of scrolling past a headline on a screen months before and not clicking, not reading, not like--how can we? We can't read about everything all the time. Sure. But I was like, dag, it's good to be in the first world, it's good to be in the United States. It's good to be where, for the most part, we hopefully feel safe and comfortable, you know. So all of that went to my mind. I'm like, OK, so if I missed this one, and I'm someone who's interested in Mexico, Mexican history, Mexican culture, Mexican people. I'm sure other people missed it, too. So I came back to the US and organized this 43 for 43 project in which I rallied... well it turned, out more than forty three, because in the end I think we had maybe sixty four participants and everybody made a square for one of the boys that disappeared. People embroidered their portraits like Heidi embroidered a portrait for one of the guys that everybody put their names on there. A lot of appliqu was done, and we made it into a long quilted protest banner. But then I took to Mexico City with me and with a mediator, helped get it to the families for whatever purposes they need to in the streets or to hang somewhere. So I love collaborative projects like that because I do believe that there are things that can only happen when we're working together. And I would like to find... I got ideas. I mean I mean always it's good to be me because I got ideas, but the thing is, I just don't have the time necessarily to organize these things. But I am hopeful that one day I will because I really enjoyed the role of organizer and I enjoyed being the person that literally pieced it all together and thinking of ways to raise awareness, and to use my time and my talent in ways that hopefully leaves us a little bit better than it was before I plopped down in nineteen eighty.

EP: That's, that's a great that's a great answer and great I think admirable goal. You mentioned... I mean many of your quilts have have messages. Is there... Why do you think that quilts are uniquely suited or rather, do you think that quilts are uniquely suited, for carrying a message?

ZF: Yeah. Oh one hundred percent. And I think it has to do with just how domestic they are. Right. All forms of art, I think, have something special or unique that only they can do, right, that's why they exist. I would say one of the things that only quilting can do is take something so domestic, something so accessible, something that would otherwise perhaps be wasted, thrown away in the garbage by trash can and turn into something else. And especially if we're thinking of some kind of community quilting, activism, quilting, political quilting. There's ways to say here, for example, here are some things that really matter to me in my heart of hearts. This is what I carry around me on a daily basis. So I'm going to reach into my drawers. I'm going to take out my clothes and cut them up, and then I'm going to make something beautiful to show you right in a similar way. In Latin America, there's a protest tradition of the cacerolazo, which is started often with women and when it was time to take the streets, protest, something they didn't do a whole lot of organizing and then like funding super PACs and all this kind of thing. They just went to the kitchen drawer, pulled out a pot and a wooden spoon and went to the street banging. Right. Like it's taking what's in our hearts, readily accessible, democratic, and taking it public and put it out there in the community. And so I think that's something that makes quilting especially suited for community engagement, for the public forum, and for sharing what's on the inside with everyone on the outside.

EP: That's a great answer, I think. Yeah, that's they have so many things going for them and kind of sometimes are a little unassuming, which is really nice and sort of soft, a soft way to get our point across.

ZF: So I think someone who's an expert at that is Kathryn Clark. I don't know if folks are familiar with her work, but she has a way of taking, like, she made... (I'm blanking). There... She made this quilt recently about inequities in rent stabilization or apartments, something like that, folks can look her up, maybe you can edit this part out, but folks can look her up.

EP: We'll share some photos.

ZF: Yeah, show us the photos, because she has a way of taking these hard truths and making them into soft fabric, literally, and it makes you want to say, "hey, what are all these little squares representing, what's going on here? What's the story?" And you sit back and you think like, "well, dang, was tough..." You know? She's an expert at that. And I hate that I'm blanking on the critical detail right now. No, that's all right. It'll come to me as soon as we click "End meeting".

EP: It always happens. So you've talked you talked about a few names, Heidi Parkes and Kathryn Clark and Irene Williams. Is there other folks or other sort of moments or anything--it doesn't have to be quilting related--that you're you're really drawn to or have been inspiring you lately?

ZF: Well, I would say I mean, the answers that come first to mind are Irene Williams are Heidi Parkes. I think Heidi does a wonderful job of turning the inside out, you know, and using her life and her body in ways to produce work that is very personal. And I think that's something that ,as artists, we should all strive for, you know, like what's what's the one thing that only I can do and let me do that. And I think I did a really great model of that Tijay Muhammad, I mentioned earlier who makes wonderful, I mean, he wouldn't consider himself a quilter, but he does use a lot of fabric. And he recently made a bunch of really lovely textile portraits of people that are close to him. And he's from Ghana. So he's working in this African tradition, it's really lovely. And he's the one that mentioned the "hopefulness of discarded objects". You know, I just love that. And there's always writers, too, you know, I love like Emerson, for example, I was I'm working on this piece for Feel Good Fibers for their blog about the role that beauty plays in our work. Like is enough just to make a beautiful something or does it need to have more meaning? And I think the inspiration for what got me thinking down that ine was Emerson, who wrote this really beautiful poem to the rhododendron, right? He's walking through the woods of Massachusetts, he sees this rhododendron and he says that "if the sages come and ask you, like, why do you exist, rhododendron? All you have to say: is beauty is not excuse for being" Like beauty is enough, you know? And so I feel like sometimes I'm working and I'm like, OK, if this particular project doesn't have capital-M Meaning? That's OK, Emerson gave me permission to say, if it's beautiful, that's enough. And so I would lump Emerson in there with Thoreau, definitely is one my a huge influences. I love it. He's trying to see through the shifting sands of what was happening during the eighteen hundreds and try to predict where we're going and try to see where we're where we're coming from. I mentioned Barbara Kingsolver. I love her nonfiction essays and I love poetry too. Right. I mean, who doesn't love like Mary Oliver with her Wild Geese poem? I read a lot, but yeah, so there's a few names folks want to....

EP: Yeah.

ZF: The glimpse of some of my input.

EP: That's great. Yeah, I mean, it's it's so interesting sometimes to hear how people funnel all their different parts of their life in their brain and into what they're thinking about. So this next question is a doozy. I'd love to ask it, but it's really, it's a challenge. But what do you think makes a great quilt?

ZF: Hmm... I'm going to say that,you know, quilt, art can be different things, great quilts can be great art and great quilts can be great quilts, right? Soit depends on how we want to frame the question. I think a great quilt is anything that is made with care and attention, anything that brings pleasure to the person making it and pleasure to the person receiving it. I think if it meets that criteria, then it's a great quilt right? Now, if we want to frame it a little bit larger, if we want to zoom out or maybe zoomin' in, I don't know what direction we're zoomin', but I think about what makes good quilt as art... Emerson says beauty is enough and I'm inclined to agree with that, but I think the reason I'm drawn to quilting is it is not just beautiful. It also has utility, but it also has a function. It keeps us warm. It tells stories. It's a way to for us to live on just a little bit, you know. Anne Truitt, who is a sculptor that some of our listeners may know is known for her almost human-size, five or six feet tall, four-sided columns made out of wood, and somebody was asking, why do you work in wood? She says, well, it has about the same lifespan as human being. And I think did the same thing applies to fabric, right, that we create these beautiful things that with with one hopes it's used right, gets loved and doesn't last that much longer than we do, but it can last a little bit. And I think, that when I think of great quilts, there's something about the fact that they're impermanent that also comes into play. They're fragile and they're delicate things. And because they're meant to be used, they break down faster. And I think there's something in that natural decomposition that is beautiful and something to aspire towards, so that's a good answer.

EP: No, that's a great answer.

ZF: Off the top of my head.

EP: No, it it's not an easy question. And I always feel a little devious for asking it, because I think it's sort of honestly sort of a cruel question. But it always we always get great answers. I mean, it's so fascinating to hear people's variety of notions of what that means and what greatness means. Where, where do most of the quilts that you make end up? Do you keep them or do you sell them? Do you and where what is the dream for their future that they that they do decompose or that they're preserved forever?

ZF: Well, a you know, a quilter's got to live so about half have been sold.

EP: Sure, I think we sometimes people are skittish about talking about this, but it's a huge part of the quilt-making world. So, yeah.

ZF: So about half have been sold, they're out there in the world, doing their thing, living their lives on people's beds, folded over their banisters on walls or whatever folks do with them. The other half are folded up in a big pile in my bedroom. In our little tiny one bedroom Brooklyn apartment, there is along one wall a long arm machine that I got several years ago. If you were to ask me what my least favorite part of quilting is--don't hate me for this--I don't like to quilt, like the actual quilting.

EP: I'm with you! If I could, if I can make a quilt and never quilt it, that'll be great now, which I guess is possible, you know.

ZF: And so that's why I got the long arm, because I'm like, OK, that makes the least unsavory part of the process for me a little bit easier. And honestly, like all my quilts get quilted the same way, unless I'm hand-quilting them, if it's machine quilting it's just parallel lines. Because I just want to, I want the quilting itself to disappear and I want the forms and the colors of the quilt top to come forward. So, oh, you're asking where do the quilts end up? So along one bedroom, blocking the window with our fire escape (probably not safe) is the long arm machine. And there's a stack of probably two dozen quilts folded up there. At some point in the future I would love to have a space where I can display them, hang them on walls.

EP: I think this is also a timely question given the quilt you have behind you, but people typically refer to quilts as a uniquely American art. You can, we can we can, argue about that until the cows come home. But that's kind of the notion. What do you think that is the importance of quilts in American life? Do they... That's, that's a that's a loaded question, but if you want to talk a little bit about that.

ZF: I do love, and it kind of circles back to a few moments ago. But I do love that quilting is not usually something that's done in a studio, is not done in a separate space. Usually it's done in people's homes, it is the heart. I mean, when you think of the most private place in your home, I got two places, one is the toilet, the other one for the bed, right? Like, when you think of the most, the heart of your home, I would argue, is your bed. And we're talking about making things for that space. And so when we choose to share that space with the outside world, there's a potential for something really special that, you know, so when you combine the fact that you're taking something that ought to be private and you're making it public and you're working with something that everybody can identify with, everyone was close by. Everybody wears fabric. It's our second skin, our second home. When you can make it something tangible that people can connect with sometimes I think something can unlock or shifted, the needle can move a little bit, and so at a time when we are having trouble communicating, and by "we" I mean Americans, are having trouble communicating with one another. There has to be some room in quilting for us to have something deeper than a conversation, like something that helps us reconnect with what truly are our core values as Americans. I believe that almost all of us would think that goodness is an American value. Compromise. has been a long American value. Consensus-building, working together, getting the job done. I mean, these are things that we could really agree on. So the thing that happens, though, is that we disagree on the words to use. Right. So maybe we take words out of the equation. We just pick up some fabric and needle and thread instead. And let's see what happens if we work together on that. I don't know what that looks like. It's been something I've been puzzling on, but I think there's space in the United States right now for some really powerful quilting projects that.

EP: Well, that is... I can't wait to see them. I really hope that those will come out of this moment. So it has been really a delight to talk to you. Is there anything you want to add or that you didn't didn't feel like you got to share or anything else?

ZF: No, I want to say thank you for this opportunity to talk. Thank you. It's always nice to talk to a like-minded soul, and I want to thank folks for listening to this whole thing, I. I got a lot of questions, you know, about how how life works. So if anything that folks have heard today in our conversation, it sparked an idea, I would love to hear from people. So maybe we can figure out a way to connect somehow. Absolutely. Because I do think that when we all put our heads together, we can see things a little more clearly, you know? No, I appreciate it, I'm very thankful for this time.