Coulter Fussell

Taught to sew by my mother, I make quilts. I rely on the time-worn qualities of discarded clothes to bring story to my quilts; resulting in works simultaneously fact and fiction. Using trashed textiles that wind up at my studio via donation, I make connections across decades, places, time and dimensions, using the remnants of Southern fall-out as my setting. I hand sew quilts both inside and outside of the tradition to exasperate the push and pull between craft’s functionality and form while addressing truths of poverty, disparity of luck, the relationship between force and power, notions of faux romanticism, woman versus machine, systems of alternate economies and the great might of the haptic. Guided by the fated nature of the donated materials and interpreting discarded clothes as an act of archeology, I use the restraint of traditional quilt patterning to self-edit what would otherwise be a full and total leap into expressionistic abstraction; playing the hyper-personal story as a wild melody in tandem with the harmony of broad themes of risk, autonomy and the freedom.