/ Art for Social Change/What We Do/Pandemic Quilt

Pandemic Quilt

Credit: Mary Andrus During the 2022-2023 academic school year Art for Social Change and the Art Therapy Department hosted a series of sewing circles virtually, on campus and in the community. Our intention was to create multiple quilts to represent how the pandemic had exacerbated and brought to light longstanding and detrimental effects injustice, inequity and oppression in the United States.

Our collective voices will stitch together our stories and lived experiences, raising critical consciousness of the inequities felt across racial, social, political, economic and cultural differences.

Quilt Square Samples

Quilting For Change event held on September 1, 2021

Our first Quilt for Change event happened on August 6, 2021 in a tent by York at the Graduate School at Lewis & Clark College.

Mary Andrus planning out a quilt square design.

Quilt square design by Mary Andrus.

Our past events include:

Presented at an ASC Open Studio with the campus’ Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative on campus.
In partnership with Bag&Baggage Theatre and 350.org we displayed squares as part of the Climate Change play series.
We hosted weekly virtual sessions to create art together in our Art for Social Change Open Studio.
We are planning a regional Art Therapy Symposium where we intend to display some of the quilts to the public.
Art for Social Change participated in the Ray Warren Ethnic Studies symposium to display pandemic quilts and moderate an art therapy sewing circle.