Articraft is the merging of artifact and craft, a merging of the skills of the past with the symbols of our present. Articraft isn’t found in a dictionary, it is a word I created out of a need to help define this work when other words were lacking in areas or missing the mark entirely when describing this thesis.

This project is a journey made of a poem that divulged a path as to how I interpreted and understood my present and past. I believe no one sees an event the same. Physiologically, every time we remember a memory it becomes fragmented and our mind alters it filling in the wisps that we have forgotten which alters its shape, structure and form. With this I recognize that my understanding of my family’s structure and poem is different than how society may see it as. For centuries society has seemed to hold a torch to the template of the patriarchal family. This template no longer fits a new generation who grasps at the stray bits of twine that create their family tapestry.

My family is no different in this confusion; I have no relationship with my mother, met my brothers for the first time this past summer, and no one, even my mother, knows who my father is. I was raised by grandparents who stood by me and helped guide my straggly lost limbs through the rubble to find a place of rest, a place for me to grind my heels in and take root. This project uses the quilt as a means of language to transcribe my message-a message of the building of a new family history that takes form in an heirloom that can be passed down and used as a means of oral history.

This project is a journey of making, and it is through making that I fully came to understand my relationship with my history and how I interpreted it.