"I have dyslexia"

speaking through small notes

Confession, Fiber: Found polyester quilt, hand-embroidered text, 64” w x 69”h, 2023. Photo Credit: Brittany Brooke Crow

There was a time in the life of our family when our eldest daughter passed us revelations in tiny notes.

They fit in the palm of my hand.

If I weren’t paying attention, I would have scooped them up as trash.

Thank my lucky stars I caught on.

I felt their weight, their importance. So I immortalized them. Delicately stitching them into pieces of found polyester quilts. I wrote about one previously; you can read that post here.

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In my life as an artist, I have learned to trust my gut. Who knows what random fact, landscape, or life experience will generate the next art idea. What studio problem is to be solved while lathering yourself up in the shower? I have folders full of photos and videos filmed in secret - of what you ask? Construction workmen in hi-vis gear. I just love the piles of dirty neon. The interestingly cut work pants of Irish house painters and road construction crews. I have a stash of textile fragment images from the V&A museum from 100 BC (The Stein Collection).

On my computer home screen is an of a hank of red hair from the same online collection.

I am currently reading texts on why we are drawn to mountains, the history of native comedians in the US, and the Psalms. I follow my curiosity.

That oftens means keeping things most people would throw away. And hoarding materials for years based on a hunch….

Like this red, white and black houndstooth patterned polyester quilt.

I found this beauty at a thrift store in Springfield, Illinois during an artist residency with Terrain Exhibitions in 2021. And it wasn’t till a few years later when it came into use.

Confession is a black, red, and white fiber work with hand embroidered text which says “I am dyslexic”. The text is from a note written by my daughter. Her note was tiny. I made this piece BIG.

When my daughter was smaller she had trouble reading. She had great diffuculty writing as well Transversing letters and numbers, writing, messing up, erasing and starting again. She was smart as a whip. With an IQ like her Dad’s. At age 5 she was repeating words like Amphisbaena back to us. You try saying that one!

Her first grade teacher told us about her suspicions of……*dsylexia*…. whispered in hushed tones at the Fall parent/teacher conferences, of course. She now reads at a college freshman level, still transposes her n’s and has a tested IQ of over 120. She is fine, thriving.

But back then, well, I was scared. Scared about what a learning disability might mean for her.

And she DID NOT want to talk about it. She ran screaming at the D-word. So we read books and talked to other teachers. Eventually we got an professional evaluation that did indeed confirmed what we had suspected.

And through that whole process, at some point that I don’t quite remember, she penned this note.

This was her confession. She had faced the word with all it’s implications. I still don’t know if she left it for me to find or if she wrote it just for herself. But when I found it, I felt it’s power. That power when you overcome a label or a stigma. That moment of turning toward a thing instead of away from it.

So I made a giant replica.

Her note, big and bold as brass, for all to behold. With her permission, of course. I kept her misspellings and transpositions. An accurate duplicate down the the cut out ‘tabs’ at the top of the fiber artwork.

The text was handembroidered. I mimicked the houndstooth patterns with french knots and straight stitches. An homage to her being brave.

The black and white checkerboard grid made me think of the strict limitations of our education system. One which often doesn’t serve neuro spicy learners. Classroom settings with tight, unshifting rules and bounderies. Standarized tests and a whole lotta boxes to be checked. My kid didn’t fit into those. Trying to fit into them was giving her anixety and perfectionism. So in this piece, her note breaks the bounderies of the grid, while weaving it’s way through them as well. It has been a pleasure to see my daughter do that same. Find her way through. Advocate for herself. Build confidence in her intelligence beyond her learning disabilities. And to see how these limitations have worked her muscles of resilence and determination.

Now, making art with or about your kids can get ethically tricky. I have been especially convicted about this piece in particular. I originally did get her permission but I wonder how comfortable she is with it. She has said, “ No problem Mom. You can exhibit that one.” But a conversation about agency and maternal art making is an important and relavant one. There was even a recent New York Times