Coulter Fussell: River Raft Quilts Series 1: Jubilee

River Raft Quilts Series 1: Jubilee
January 6 – February 12, 2021

Works by Coulter Fussell, Curated by Michelle Laxalt

Using textiles and associated stories of entrapment/escape donated to their studio, Coulter Fussell hand-sews “River Raft Quilts” with those materials, thereby setting the stories free on a conceptual path to redemption and sovereignty. From a work t-shirt at a tedious job, a pair of sweatpants worn while unemployed during quarantine, a dress from a bad relationship, a kitchen towel used as a napkin, or an old quilt from when their mother’s house was cold…Fussell uses the metaphor of the river-as-escape-passage to lend these stories their deserved exemption.

Coulter Fussell was born and raised in Columbus, Georgia, an old textile town. She is the youngest family quilter, hailing from multi-generations of seamstresses and quilters. She produces boundary-pushing quilt-works using old, discarded and donated textiles as her sole materials. Taught to quilt by her mother, Coulter has exhibited works across the country from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to the Piecework Collective in New York City to The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, South Carolina. As a craftswoman trained only by her mother, Coulter was the Finalist for the 2017 SouthArts Southern Prize, the 2019 Visual Arts Inductee into the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters and a 2019 United States Artists Fellow in Craft. Coulter lives in Water Valley, Mississippi with her family.

Michelle Laxalt is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Atlanta. She earned a BFA from the University of Nevada, Reno, and an MFA as a Welch Fellow from Georgia State University in Atlanta. Laxalt has exhibited nationally in numerous exhibitions. She has given artist talks at Gallery 72 and MINT Gallery in Atlanta and has participated on artist panels at the Holland Project Gallery (Nevada), Georgia Tech (Atlanta), and Auburn University (Alabama). She has completed residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Hambidge Center in North Georgia. From 2015 to 2018 she taught undergraduate studio courses in ceramics and three-dimensional design at Georgia State University. She recently completed a MINT Leap Year Fellowship and currently works out of her home studio. In addition to her studio practice, Laxalt is the Gallery Manager for the Forward Arts Foundation, a non-profit arts organization in Atlanta. There, she has overseen numerous group and solo exhibitions and plays a key role in administering the Foundation’s prestigious Edge Award. She also co-curates its annual Summer Invitational, an exhibition highlighting contemporary craft and craft-based work from Atlanta and the Southeast.

Photo Album | Related Exhibition: Feel Just Like Home | WATCH: Coulter Fussell + Cicelia Ross-Gotta in Conversation w/ Guest Curators | Wrap Up by Otis Heimer