Heather Kerley

Mourning our Kin (23 Extinct) Redwork Quilt

In 2021, the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed 23 species for delisting from the Endangered Species Act due to presumed extinction. I have completed a redwork quilt honoring each of these species.  I created the quilt almost entirely by hand over a period of 21 months.  I researched each species and created unique designs for each one, placing it in its environment, often with mutually beneficial plants and trees. I then hand-embroidered each design before assembling and hand-quilting the entire piece. In the current era, in which we face the possible extinction of upwards of one million species, it falls to artists to respond to the question of how we are to live with such loss. This quilt was just the beginning of my on-going encounter with a vanishing world.

However, while grief is a necessary and natural response to the crises we face, it is necessary to offer a window into a different possible world, a world of healing and reconnection. Robin Wall Kimmerer, the ecologist and Potawatomi author of Braiding Sweetgrass suggests using the word “kin” for more-than-human persons like animals, trees, and rivers as a step toward restoring balance and reciprocity to our planet. 

To this end, my “Seed Bank Quilts,” “Prayer Flags” and “Rekinning” watercolor series represent regenerative – but deconstructive – explorations into a kinship connection with the more-than-human world.