From the nearly abstracted patterns featuring dozens of Black faces in the meticulous work of Sharon Kerry-Harlan to portraits inspired by real events like Donna Chambers’ celebration of President Barack Obama’s inauguration, Masters of the Stitch: Threaded Stories at Claire Oliver Gallery spotlights remarkable narratives in fabric.
The exhibition draws from the collection of Carolyn Mazloomi, founder of the Women of Color Quilters Network, whose strategy over the better part of the last four decades has been to highlight the craft as an artistic expression beyond what the gallery describes as “folk curiosity.” Works simultaneously function “as fine art, historical archive, and cultural testimony, asserting once and for all that Black quiltmaking deserves a central place in the American art canon,” says a statement.
The 12 artists included in the show reference a range of perspectives and stories, from childhood memories to the COVID-19 pandemic to civil rights actions like the Freedom Train. “Black American quilts occupy a singular position in the history of American art: they are simultaneously an intimate domestic practice and a form of public witness,” the gallery says. “For generations, these textiles carried stories that could not always be spoken aloud of family, faith, resistance, grief, and joy.”
Masters of the Stitch: Threaded Stories continues through August 8 in Harlem. You might also enjoy Stephen Towns’ quilted paintings celebrating midcentury leisure in the South and Bisa Butler’s vibrant stitched portraits.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article ‘Masters of the Stitch: Threaded Stories’ Spotlights Narrative Quilts by Black Americans appeared first on Colossal.
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© <p> Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Correction</p>
Margaret Bourke-White, one of the original four staff photographers hired at LIFE magazine when it began publishing in 1936, had a talent for making beautiful pictures from industrial processes. See her photo essay on a Canadian paper mill for one such example.
For LIFE’s July 17, 1939 issue Bourke-White documented another industry: the telephone business. This was back in the day when the ability to talk to anyone anywhere by dialing some numbers wasn’t yet taken for granted.
“Even in this age, when mechanical marvels become a dime a dozen, the telephone remains a marvelous mechanical instrument,” LIFE wrote in its story. “…When you finally hear the ring which announces that you are connected to your number, 882 separate and distinct operations have been started and completed, all in 11 seconds.”
Of course nowadays an 11-second-wait to connect a call sounds like an eternity. And the rotary phones that this story heralded are now all but obsolete. But back then it was the new wave of technological advancement. LIFE wrote that almost half the 20,000,000 U.S. telephones were dial-operated and predicted, “Eventually almost all of them will be dial instruments.”
The New York Telephone Company, which was a local subsidiary of AT&T at the time, gave Bourke-White behind-the-scenes access for an essay which includes many images that are delightfully anachronistic to the modern viewer. One shows human telephone operators surrounded by phone books that were used to answer calls to Information. Another image shows operators on the international desk manually plugging wires into specific holes in order to complete overseas calls. Another shows a board with tiny meters that tracked usage for individual phone bills.
Bourke-White also documented the mechanics of how a call was made. In LIFE’s original story the photos were part of a sequence which, combined with interpretive illustrations, documented the Rube Goldberg-type chain of events required to connect callers. Bourke-White, as she always did, found beauty in the details.
Today’s world of digital calling is undoubtedly more efficient. These photos are a record of a technological system that was wondrous for decades, but has long since been relegated to the scrap heap.
Operators routed international calls at a switchboard in New York City, 1939.
Margaret Bourke-White/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Telephone operators consulted reference books in the course of answering calls to “Information,” 1939. Nationally, information operators fielded two million calls a day.
Margaret Bourke-White/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
These international directories were kept nearby as a resource for AT&T phone operators connecting overseas calls, 1939.
Margaret Bourke-White/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
As part of their training, novice telephone operators spoke into a voice mirror—a recording device which played the voice right back—so that they could hear if they were speaking clearly enough, 1939.
Margaret Bourke-White/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
An operator worked an AT&T telephone switchboard in New York City, 1939.
Margaret Bourke-White/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock
In 1939 this voice-scrambling technology helped AT&T protect the privacy of overseas calls from ham radio operators.
Margaret Bourke-White/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
For a 1939 story on how telephone calls worked, this photo showed part of a huge distributing frame studded with terminal stripes into which each telephone was directly connected to its individual terminal point at the New York Telephone Co. office.
Margaret Bourke-White/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
In a 1939 story that explained the details of how a phone call was made, the dials in this picture show a call going to 245-4400, which was the phone number of the LIFE magazine offices.
Margaret Bourke-White/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
These mechanisms made the ringing noise in a dial-up telephone, 1939.
Margaret Bourke-White/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
These meters registered calls and determined a user’s monthly phone bill, 1939.
Margaret Bourke-White/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A telephone repair man worked on a network of cables that ran beneath the New York City streets for the New York Telephone Co., 1939.
Margaret Bourke-White/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
New York Telephone Co. lineman Wallace Burdick made repairs on telephone lines between Vallhalla and Brewster, 1939.
Margaret Bourke-White/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The post The World Before Wireless, As Photographed By Margaret Bourke-White appeared first on LIFE.
In communities throughout Switzerland’s Appenzell Hinterland and Midland regions, a unique tradition with enigmatic origins unfolds around the New Year. Known as Silvesterchlausen, the custom entails a group of boys and men who don remarkable, handmade costumes with masks and headdresses that represent rural, wild, and natural scenes.
“Silvesterchlausen,” a dreamy short film by writer and director Andrew Norman Wilson, highlights this regional seasonal event, which occurs on December 31 and January 13. The first date marks the turn of the new year on the Gregorian calendar, while January 13 denotes the same on the Julian calendar. The ornately dressed mummers, in groups of six, polyphonically yodel and ring bells. “The ritual has been performed for at least 500 years, but nobody knows how or why it began,” Wilson says.
Some of the performers’ headwear resembles miniature parade floats, while otherworldly designs made from pinecones, mosses, grasses, and other organic items make some of them appear as though they have emerged directly from the earth. In small, tight-knit municipalities, the tradition is a rare instance of relative anonymity, as familiar residents disappear behind meticulously crafted garments.
The performers, known as Chläuse, practice diligently for a month or so before the event, creating something of a “Chläus fever.” Boys form the groups and “continue throughout their lives until the members are too old to withstand the physical toll of the 18-hour days,” Wilson says, sharing that the participants build significant bonds.
As New Year’s Eve arrives, the mummers connect houses with a red string, literally and figuratively stitching connections within the community. Then, as the Chläuse move through villages and visit homes, local residents provide mulled wine to keep their bodies warm and spirits high.
See the film on Vimeo, and find more of Wilson’s work on Instagram. If you’re in the Upper Midwest, you can experience a taste of this annual tradition in New Glarus, Wisconsin. You might also enjoy Ashley Suszczynski’s incredible and mysterious photographs exploring European masking rituals.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article A Short Film Joins the Timeless Swiss Masked Tradition of Silvesterchlausen appeared first on Colossal.
Over the course of two decades, Queens resident Joe Macken meticulously built an entire city from the ground up. In fact, he built New York City—the whole thing—one building, house, and bridge at a time. Now, his expansive scale construction is on view in He Built This City: Joe Macken’s Model at the Museum of the City of New York.
Macken began working on the 50-by-27-foot model in 2004, first in Middle Village, Queens, before moving to Clifton Park, New York. It comprises 340 individual sections, each built from everyday materials like cardboard and glue, with many of the buildings constructed of balsa wood and detailed with pencil and paint. He completed the structure in 2025, and it’s now on long-term view at the museum, where visitors can walk around it and are encouraged to use binoculars to find familiar buildings and neighborhoods.
You may also enjoy the “Panorama of the City of New York” at the Queens Museum, which was completed in 1964 and took a team of more than 100 people about three years to complete.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Joe Macken Spent 21 Years Hand-Assembling a Vast Model of New York City appeared first on Colossal.
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