Summer of Rage 

This body of work responds to the heinous series of events that have taken place this summer: events that have stripped students and teachers of their rights to safety in the classroom, highlighting the American preference for guns over human life; that have stripped women, nonbinary folk, and trans men of their rights to access healthcare and to exercise bodily autonomy; and of the impending loss of rights signaled by supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s view of precedent in cases regarding contraception, gay marriage, medical privacy, and interracial marriage. To begin working through this dystopian sequence of events manifesting in our shared reality and the erasure of the queer community’s existence in the language and action following the fall of Roe V. Wade, they began to quilt. The history of quilting and fiber arts as a medium is profoundly feminine and inherently queer – Cassie builds upon a rich history of association within these new works. They employ traditional quilt-making techniques to produce easily identifiable, weighted American symbolism. They use strictly red, white, and blue; patriotic fabrics to point to the inexpressible ironies of modern-day patriotism within a country that values neither human life nor fundamental freedoms. These quilts and paper works convey the dangers of nationalism and highlight America’s ever-quickening descent into a fascist and extremist state.