Michael's/Government Plaza, recycled fabrics, cotton batting, hand stitching, 2021.

Around December of 2021, I was finishing up the fall semester with not one, but two incomplete courses. I had not submitted the final assignments and I was totally burnt out. The semester had been stressful, I had spread myself way too thin, taken on too many responsibilities, and I had little left to give to the very interesting classes I had been attending for the last four months.

One of these very interesting classes was Southern Queer History, which focused heavily on local archives of queer ocmmunity in my college town and the U.S. South at large. I had learned so much from the class, and yet I just could not bring myself to write it all down in an end of semester reflection essay. I emailed my professor explaining as much, accepting defeat and boldly claiming that I was resentful of the normativity of writing in academia. I said that the course had impressed on me the importance of making space for difference and creativity in society, especially in the ways we recontextualize the past and represent history. I was ready to accept a zero on the assignment, eager even, I felt justified in my resistance and was happy to put the semester behind me. My professor responded back in a way I did not expect but could not refuse. "Why don't you do a creative project then instead, I'll give you an incomplete until you finish it."

And thus the idea for this quilt was born. I decided to create an abstract, quilted memorialization of Michael's Lounge--a drag bar from my town that was popular during the 90s and early 2000s. It was torn down in the early 00s as part of an initiative organized by the local government and university systtem to build a park known as Government Plaza. The initiative was viewed by many as an appeal to middle and upper class tourism and an effort to get rid of queer and poc gathering spaces in the downtown area. The quilt is a patchwork depicting different scenes of the Michael's Loung interior and of the park, giving recognition to the existence of place as a memory that must be reconstructed in relation to its absence and replacement. For example the disco ball hangs above the park, with its curated trees and bright blue sky, and is echoed in the representstion of a circular water fountain that currently stands in Government Plaza. The zebra pattern collomn refrences a pillar of a similar design that stood within Michael's, and the white circles scattered across the top of the quilt represent reflective plates that decorated the stage for drag performances. To find source material for this piece, I referenced images on the Michael's Lounge facebook account. Click HERE to access their page.