Sowing Quilts in Diaspora: Octavia Butler and Tikkun Olam

Rebecca Cynamon-Murphy
September 6 - October 6, 2024

The Earthseed quilt series honors the prophetic work of Octavia Butler, with hand-written transcriptions of the verses from the Parables of the Sower and the Talents tucked into the piecing alongside upcycled and traditional textiles. On the side wall begins Part 1, an 8 foot textural portrait of the author, continuing to the left are other quilts in the series, iterations on her themes of diasporic thriving, including communal wealth, housing, and co-existence with wildlife when our current civilization falls.

Rebecca Cynamon-Murphy is a fat-lady queer Jewish artist in Wheaton IL who makes quilts, tends the hearth, and mends the world in equal measures. She holds a Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor’s in English and Secondary Education from Illinois Wesleyan University. A member of the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild, she is self-taught in design & construction and her textile art tends toward themes of body liberation, racial reconciliation, and mental health.

Learn more at LilithQuilts.com