THE OVERTURES

Cutting Up Portraits

Eleanor Barba and Quilting as Subversion

by Miden Wood

Every month, we’re going to do an interview with our resident artist. Eleanor Barba is Da Vinci Art Alliance’s resident artist for the month of August. 

“So we have an eight point star of Nixon…”

“So we have an eight point star of Nixon…” Eleanor Barba gestures to a quilting square pinned to the wall of her studio. We’re here for a studio visit, and Richard Nixon—or, part of him—stares out at us, surrounded by fragments of his own hairline. While the quilted Nixon surprises me, I also expected the surprise. Eleanor has a knack for combining these two time- and skill-intensive, tradition-informed practices—oil painting and quilting—and, in their juxtaposition, highlighting the absurdity of our expectations.

“I mean, obviously, this is not a funny subject,” Eleanor says of the scraps on her work table—portraits of men cut into triangles and squares. “But it's kind of a funny object at the end of the day.”

If you’ve seen Eleanor Barba’s work before, it’s probably made you laugh. From her hand-painted streakers stumbling through quilted green billiard felt to her pieces with titles like “Does this look like a normal bug bite to you?” Eleanor’s work, like Eleanor herself, has a tremendous sense of humor. Which is part of why, she says, it was so helpful to have a separate, neutral space in the DVAA residency studio to tackle something more serious.

“I could have made these at home,” Eleanor says, gesturing to a portrait she was reluctant to paint, “But it really was the realization that I needed to take myself out of the home to create these more heavy works. And now that I've started, I think it'll be easier.”

The project in question is a quilt modeled after the 1844 House of Industry Signature Quilt that hangs in Arch Street Meeting House—a museum and Quaker place of worship located in Old City. The quilt is composed of at least 75 individual squares and signed by 76 women in total who made the quilt as a gift for the Meeting House matron.

“It's clearly all very hand-sewn,” Eleanor says of the original quilt, “That was kind of the crisis of confidence I had. I was like, ‘I'm not going to be able to hand sew this.’” This limitation is due to a difference in materials: Eleanor’s quilts will be made from canvas and linen layered with paint. Specifically, every square will be made from cut-up portraits of men who are practicing Quakers and who have committed harm to women—either infamously, like Nixon, or in Eleanor’s personal experience.

“Quakerism has a sterling reputation because of the religious organization’s work in non-violent conflict and the Civil Rights Movement,” Eleanor says of the religion she was raised in. But she has seen firsthand the ways in which the Quaker community is not exempt from the patriarchy in which it exists—even as patriarchy contradicts the religion’s core tenets. “It's kind of like that joke about the guy in Bushwick who thinks he's really woke or whatever but will still cut you off… I think that's really true in Quakerism. ‘I'm on this good side of history, I'm a part of this peaceful religion’—but we're still living in a society where there's a patriarchy.”

“‘I'm on this good side of history, I'm a part of this peaceful religion’—but we're still living in a society where there's a patriarchy.'”

Eleanor points to two tenets of Quakerism in particular: inward light—the idea that God is in everyone, and that each person deserves according dignity and respect—and the theological belief of continuing revelation, in which one should always be “branching off and creating different ideas of what we think the Bible or God is saying.” In essence, what, in a changing world, is worth keeping and what is it worthwhile to let go?

“I think seeing the light in everyone… I don't even think that they know that they're not seeing the light when they harm people,” Eleanor says. “You still hurt someone. You still, in that moment, didn't see the light of God in that person, and—whether or not that is actually your fault or not, or just how you were raised—that's part of the continuing revelation, that you have to continue to look and learn and grow. And I just don't think a lot of these men wanted to continue to grow.”

As she continues to build out each square—making the faces of these men more abstracted, interconnected, kaleidoscopic—the form of the quilts echoes Eleanor’s argument. While these figures might see themselves as discrete exceptions from the gendered power dynamics of society at large, they are actually pieces of that society, inextricably woven into the power structures that allow them to—whether knowingly or unknowingly—cause harm.

“There's also the dichotomy of an oil painting, which is high art, and then quilting, which has always been considered a craft.”

“There's also the dichotomy of an oil painting, which is high art, and then quilting, which has always been considered a craft. Then also, of course, all the male masters of oil painting versus all the women quilters and artists who make these beautiful objects and then are forgotten to obscurity.” By cutting up the oil paintings, and giving precise attention and care to the quilting, Eleanor mocks the seriousness and respect an oil portrait tends to imply. Instead it is the quilt, inspired by the work of so many women, that is empowered to tell the story of the paintings it contains. By constructing it, Eleanor, too, turns the faces of these men into a testament to her skill, her artistry and her tenacious wit. The quilt itself is a document of Continuing Revelation—holding what has been, deciding what to keep, what to let go, and recontextualizing it for the present moment and beyond.

I mentioned earlier Eleanor’s sense of humor. I think it’s such a strong presence in her work because she has a very keen sense of context. Jokes are all context! Unexpected subversions of what we expect and already know. So it makes sense that even this work, made from the fragments of difficult history, still resonates with a hum of humor. With this quilt, Eleanor is reclaiming context—and the joke is on the subjects within it.

As for how to live by continuing revelation as a principle, I can’t help but feel that the fragmenting of these portraits demonstrates a way forward. How can we become better, or heal—how can our culture heal—when we allow our most egoic ideas of self to be broken? “Isn't it so nice that we can… think about ourselves, and learn and grow,” Eleanor says, “and try and teach other people to do the same?”