Courtesy of Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Art
No one has a ready answer for the basic, “how are you doing?” these days. Most respond “great” out of habit or politeness, but every once in a while, someone tries to give a genuine answer, stammering ahead with “uh…well as good as one can be, I guess.” I will speak for myself and say that the reason for the difficulty stems from basic differences between hedonic and evaluative well-being, or, in other words, creature comfort versus general contentment. While I may be circumstantially fine and have nothing limiting my primordial reptilian happiness, I remain troubled, so I’m forced to grapple with the basic question: why shouldn’t a tasty bite of delicious dinner taste as delicious in a pandemic?
Hedonistic calculus, as Jeremy Bentham termed it, isn’t easy to do. It’s less easy to do with apples and oranges that are partially invisible and evolving into different fruits over time. If Bentham were here now, he might change “calculus” to “differential equations.” But, as foundational as our general well-being is, we should be probably be taking some notes about the emotional math of this traumatic moment. A start to the process might involve visualizing the invisible component, which is what the “Quarantine Quilt” on view at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts does. It’s a single physical object as well as a collection of hundreds of individual thoughts and gestures that ultimately give form to the collective void of our anxieties.
“The Quarantine Quilt” is actually a collection of 20-plus separate quilts fashioned from 12 x 12-inch swatches of fabric, donated by participants from as far away as the Netherlands. The 400 donated sections have been fashioned into unique quilts by dozens of volunteers, making the project truly collaborative and emblematic of the interconnectivity of our communities. Inside the converted barn of the museum, the singular impact of the overall installation yields to the presence of each hanging quilt, and then finally to the individual squares; a sequence of nested realities analogous to those of our communities in general. The installation inevitably dissolves into separate vignettes and expressions, and we single in on particular moments. Like two adjacent squares by Carole Loeffler of Pennsylvania, one urging us to “hold on” the other to “let go”—a needling account of the conflicting impulses aroused by the lockdown: one active, one passive. It’s an apt distillation of what we’re all grappling with; omission rarely feels as satisfying as a commission. As a species we seem far better suited to step on spiders than to wait out storms.
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Enduring Impressions
A square offered by Bonnie L. Connolly of Wisconsin depicts a bonneted little girl in profile holding a bottle of bleach. It’s a sad and especially particular impression, reminiscent of the videos of children putting on gas masks in World War I or enduring Cold War bomb drills in the ‘50s. We’re forced to face the inevitability of such historical trials and how they reach beyond the fantasies we construct to shelter our kids. A few of the squares suggest the coming of Easter and/or Spring, and work to similar effect, reminding us of the rituals and rites disrupted over the past seven months; how quaint they once seemed, and how real they have become.
Despite its irregular moments most of the Quilt is actually politely formal, with lots of geometry and pattern. However, that general consistency provides a great stage for the eccentric outliers. Perhaps the single most evocative panel is one by Meg Selkey with the embroidered message, “AND AFTER THIS IS OVER WE WILL RUN AND HUG AND KISS AND DANCE AND WEED AND KICK AND SCREAM AND TEAR EVERYTHING APART SO WE CAN START AGAIN.” As if channeling the voice of Pete Seeger via The Old Testament, it reassures us that there is in fact a time for every purpose under heaven. And this is ours. Calamities like world wars and pandemics are not desirable, but it often requires such massive disruptions to realize how much we have at stake, and how much we take granted. The math of contentment may be impossible to process, but we can gather through a stitched networked of personal stories that our interconnected relationships help make it far easier to swallow.
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