Video about the construction with more images under the video tab or by watching on Youtube.
Life 13, Mitochondrial Roots
The Life Story Quilts. A series of quilts recording and illustrating stories of female experiences.
Background.
The "story"of Life 13, Mitochondrial Roots, is about male primogeniture - the historical right of males to inherit and have superiority over females. I made this quilt a few years ago because I remember being annoyed that despite being in the 21st century the UK government had only recently agreed that a first born, even if she was female, could directly inherit the UK throne and did not have to stand aside and give way to males any longer! A small thing to many, but I thought it indicative of the inequalities of being female. We are supposed to be civilised and living in a country with equal opportunities legislation. Throughout history male primogeniture has meant "keeping it in the family", but recent discoveries about mitochondrial dna, mean that we can all trace ourselves back to one ancestor...who was female, Mitochondrial Eve. To "keep it in the family" perhaps we should have had female primogeniture. Anyway, this was my idea behind the quilt!
The quilt won the Wolverhampton Open, and also Visitors Choice prize at Wolverhampton Open, and sold. It was exhibited quite widely at galleries and quilt shows, and as usual with the Life Story Quilts caused a little upset at the latter, hence the warning above. I don’t think it needs one, but you lot sometimes do!
The explanation/tag lines
No matter what colour our skin is, or our language, or our culture, we all share ancestors from the people who built Stonehenge, or who rode with Genghis Khan, or set sail across the oceans in canoes, or who planted papyrus on the banks of the Nile. Everyone alive today can trace their lineage back over 2 hundred thousand years to one woman, Mitochondrial Eve.
The image is drawn directly onto white cloth and gradually painted and stitched to show 3 women (all drawn from life- the models came to the studio). I used watered acrylics so they looked like water colours and it took several layers to build as the cloth wasn’t sized with gels or gesso as they would have altered the look and ability to stitch through the cloth. I took the image of the roots from photos taken of trees on various walks. I found a particularly knotty gnarly specimen growing on the bank of The Manchester Ship Canal. The roots are heavily stitched in freehand with the names of various females throughout history. Quite a lot of research had to be done and I found it quite difficult to get these names together, because our recorded history often skipped women’s contributions - despite being half of the population of course!
The following names are stitched onto the roots. Maybe you think it’s an odd selection but I wanted to include the notorious and upsetting as well as those normally regarded as worthy. How many do you know?!
Artimisia Gentileschi, Catalina de Erauso, Catherine de Medici, Flora Sandes, Judith Leyster, Laura Bassi, Lucrezia Borgia, Madam de Staet, Maria Montessori, Maria Theresa, Properzia Ross, Mary Queen of Scots, Barbara Hepworth, Indira Gandhi, George Eliot, Lady Jane Grey, Jenny Joseph, Wendy Cope Anne Bronte, Sappho, Clepatra, Hildegard of Bingen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Joan of Arc, Mirabai, Elizabeth 1, Catherine the Great, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Florence Nightingale, Susan B Anthony, Emily Dickinson, Marie Curie, Emily Murphy, Helen Keller, Annie Besant, Simone de Beauvioir, Mother Teresa, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Seacole, Rosalind Franklin, Jocelyn Bell Burnett, Esther Lederberg, Chien-Shiung Wu, Lise Meitner, Nettie Stevens, Emmeline Pankhurst, Boudicca, Nancy Astor, Dorothy Hodgkin,Millicent Fawcett, Billie Holiday, Eva Peron, Betty Friedon, Marie Stopes, Anne Frank, Germaine Greer, Wangari Maathai, Shirin Ebadi, Malala Yousafzai, Marie Antoinette, Amelia Earhart, Amy Johnson, Aung San Suu Kyi, Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Caroline Norton, Elizabeth Gaskell, Virginia Woolf, Edith Cavell,Elsie Inglis, Ellen Isabel Jones, Grace Kimmins, Lady Constance Lytton, Christabel Pankhurst, Sylvia Pankhurst, Queen Isabella of Spain, Pocahontas, Frances E Willard, Lucy Stone, Dorothea Dix, Sojourner Truth, Edith Cavell, Virginia Apgar, Christine de Pizan, Hrotsvitha, Theodora, Maria Agnesi, Mary Anning, Florence Merriam Bailey,Laura Maria Caterina Bassi, Ruth Benedit, Elizabeth Gaskell, Elizabeth Blackwell, Annie Jump Cannon, Emilie du Chatelet, Cleopatra the Alchemist, Gerty T Cori, Eva Crane, Artemesia, Gertrude Bell Elion, Alice Evans, Sophie Germain, Maria Geoppert-Mayor, Elena Conrnaro Piscopia, Mary Fairfax Somerville, Ada Lovelace, Sofia Kovalevskaya, Alicia Stott, Amalie Emmy Noether, Anna Maria Von Schurman, Anne of Austria, Tanni Grey Thompson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Naomi Anderson, Annie Arniel, Gertrude Ansell, Olympe de Gouge, Mary Sophie Allen, Louisa Garrett Anderson, Frances Balfour, Mary Gawthorpe, Lydia Becker, Ethel Bentham, Teresa Billington Greig, Margaret Bondfield, Mary Crudelius, Emily Davison, Nellie Hall, Mrs Beeton, Rosa Parks, Lady Caroline Lamb, Irene Sendler, Ealizabeth Eames, Alexandra Kollantai, Julia Bentley, Abigail Adams, Eudora Welty, Ada Lovelance, Margaret Macdonald, Queen Victoria, Mrs Siddons, Elizabeth 2, Kathryn Bigelow, and Anne Boleyn