DEATH and Life
In 2020-2022, the Wisconsin-based women’s art collective, the Memory Cloth Circle created three banners which we sent to Colombia. Virgelina Chará and the Unión de Costurero organized events with stitching, food, music and dancing to prepare banners for an event titled “Arropamos El Palacio de Justica 2022; La Memoria, La Paz, La Verdad, y El Derecho a La Vida.” Memory Cloth Circle joined the live online events and created the banners to wrap the Palace of Justice in fabric to help promote other perspectives on what happened within the framework of the Colombian armed conflict.
For more than a decade, the members of the Memory Cloth Circle, including women from Tanzania and Colombia, had been collaborating on group exhibitions and individual pieces to process our shared experiences of love, loss and grief. Our connection with the organizers, Virgelina Chará and the Unión de Costurero, represented a chance to build bridges across national borders and to add our voices to those of the many artists using fiber arts to pursue social justice throughout the hemisphere, as richly detailed in Lorna Dillon’s germinal essay “Embroidery at Abya Yala.”¹
The connection with Virgelina Chará’s project represented a direct outgrowth of the transnational sensibility that gave rise to the Memory Cloth Circle in 2013. In December 2005 I saw an exhibit, Weavings of War; Fabrics of Memory, which included Memory Cloths from South Africa. These brightly colored fabrics had embroidered images from the maker’s memory. Accompanying them were narrative paragraphs, the maker telling the story of the scenes depicted. It was part of an effort to reclaim the memories of women’s experiences of Apartheid left out of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s official record.
It was an A-HA moment. Since then, I have been making these embroidered stories from my life. I embroider the image on a vintage textile (mostly my Mother’s or Grandmother’s or gifts) and write the story that goes next to them. I started with stories I tell often, then ones of my revelations and spiritual discoveries and feelings of love and grief. As I worked on these stories as Memory Cloths I came to a forgiveness and peace inside myself.
In 2012 Voices of Women, Amazwi Abesifazane, invited me to speak at the Phansi Museum, Durban, South Africa, where their Memory Cloths were kept. They were pleased with how engaged I’ve become with their process. I was so glad. They asked me to share their healing process with others in America. Drawn from my own experience, the images and stories that follow reflect my own journey in the borderlands between healing, grief, and loss.
“Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.”
—Tennessee Williams
Iowa rest stop public art on I 80 from The Milktrain Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore
Memory Cloth – 22 MONTHS
Last November my sister-in-law died in her sleep. So unexpectedly. I knew what to do with my shock and grief, I began stitching. Ellie was an amazing quilter. We have nearly a dozen of her quilts. I started a Memory Cloth with the image of a quilt and the dates of her life. The repetitive movement of embroidery creates a meditative state of mind. As I recalled many times with her, these memories interrupted the painful cyclic thoughts so common in grief.
Then in December Evelyn passed away from cancer. Physically active and athletic, I knew her as an artist, part of our stitching group. “Don’t Worry Be Happy” was her embroidery for the Songs We Love exhibit. I added that to my piece.
In August 2021 Terry died from cancer. A hiker and biker, with high energy and an ebullient spirit she made humorous art quilts. Harlequin glasses on a woman with a Bee-hive hairdo for our exhibit on Bees and Pollinators. They were too big to bring to our weekly meetings, so she brought Scraps (to sew) on Scraps. Actual one added to the piece.
Carol Chase Bjerke passed in October 2022 cancer again. She was a photographer and painted with emulsion on photo paper. “Growth Rings: Moving Enso” are created from a series of Zen mediative practices and her experience with cancer.
In June my brother’s wife, Peggy, died after surgery for cancer. She was a spectacular cook. Everything she made was the best you ever had. Her fresh tomato pie was memorable.
As I was stitching the words, I used the excess thread randomly to fill in with little Xs and dots in French knots. Then I found the quote from Suzuki Roshi, “Knowing life is short – Enjoy it day after day, moment after moment.” I realized the Xs and dots were marking the days and moments I was remembering from each of their lives.
Made November 2022 – July 2023
I knew stitching was healing. That was the purpose of the South African Memory Cloths that had inspired me in 2005.
They were created to heal trauma from Apartheid. After making many about my middle class, middle America, middle child issues, I contacted them. They said they were delighted I was using their idea and to share it with others in the United States.
The first time I started embroidering in the shock of an unexpected death was for Rae after a simple surgery. I stitched for several days - round and round. Memories of her life came to me, her laughter, her intensity, her creativity.
Memory Cloth – ATIRA
Helen called to say our good friend Rae died.
I started sewing this mandala as something to do with my grief.
Later I remembered her middle name meant star. I miss her.
Made 3/1/2009
So when my father was in the hospital and slipped away, I knew stitching was important for me. I made many about his life before I could do this one about him dying.
Memory Cloth – DAD’S LAST DAY
I was holding Dad’s hand when he died.
One moment he was there in the window light.
Then he was gone and the world outside the window was reality.
Made 5/12/13 Recalling 5/12/12
The border between life and death often seems distant. COVID shifted that for many of us. It is a border that we can only watch being crossed.
Losing 5 women important in my life within 22 months has changed me.
I’d thought no one I was close to had died of COVID. Two of these women assumed their symptoms were Long COVID and delayed going to the doctor. But by then, both had stage 4 cancer with only months to live.
Death and life, life and death can be a gradual or an abrupt border.
One we practice facing with loved ones until it is our turn.
“Fear of death is a waste of time. Death is part of life.”
—Dalai Lama
the Moth on WPR 7/8/23
About the Author
Leslee Nelson, professor emerita, UW-Madison creates Memory Cloths, embroidered images with narratives from her experiences. She was inspired by Memory Cloths from South Africa, textiles based on women' experiences of Apartheid. Those women asked her to share the process with others in America, she has continued to do that with each exhibit. The Memory Cloth Circle formed in Madison in 2013 and has met every Wednesday since.