STARKVILLE — To understand a place like Mississippi, you must first look at its quilts. Or at least, viewers can see large swaths of the state through quilts designed by the Southern Fiber Artists group this month at the Oktibbeha County Heritage Museum.

Fiber artists with the group came from across the state to the museum Wednesday, discussing their latest exhibition. Each artist present discussed their work with members of the public, as they displayed creative quilts that used different materials, techniques, colors and textures following the theme “Mississippi.”

“Our hope was to represent all the areas of the state with an art piece, which would bring attention to both art quilting and Mississippi,” Julia Graber, one of the group’s founders, read from a prepared statement. “Ideas and subjects are plentiful. There is no way to completely encompass the rich heritage of the entire state, but we were able to find so much to be proud of to highlight in a quilt.”

Graber, a Columbus-based artist, started the state-wide group between 2014 and 2015, as she wanted to find “like-minded people” who wanted to veer outside of the box of traditional quilting. The group started meeting quarterly, growing up to 35 members at its meetings. But after the COVID-19 pandemic, the group took on the Mississippi challenge to jumpstart their creativity.

Graber said the challenge started with 11 artists each selecting a letter from the word “Mississippi” and creating an artistic version of that letter. But once the letter quilts were finished, the challenge expanded to other themed quilts, each representing different parts of Mississippi. When all was said and done, the exhibition grew to include about 100 quilts, Graber said, each accompanied by its own artist statement to explain the process.

While some of the quilts represented certain cities and towns, like Starkville, Columbus, Oxford and others, some quilts represented places like the Blues Trail or the Natchez Trace. Others represented famous Mississippians like Elvis Presley or B.B. King. Still, others included peaches, blueberries, catfish, and anything else artists could imagine to represent the state.

Fiber artist Leanne Green acted as the facilitator of the exhibition. Green personally started quilting in 1995, but she found artistic quilting much later. She joined the Southern Fiber Artists in 2016. And every quilt, she said, should tell a story.

One piece Green made for the exhibition, an “I” in the word “Mississippi,” focused on Mississippi writers. She said she was inspired by the old advertising slogan, “Mississippians can read. Some can even write.” Faces included on the quilt included people like William Faulkner, Willie Morris, and even a Starkville local.

“Her name is Laurie Parker, who is on the quilt,” Green said. “And she contacted me after she had seen it, which really made this more meaningful for me. I’ve now met two authors from this piece of artwork, and it really means the world that she reached out to talk to me about that.”

Graber displayed a quilt to the crowd made by her granddaughter, Tina, who was 12-years-old when she made it. The quilt was a stitched map of the state, including representations of a steamboat, a magnolia, cotton and other designs.

“My grandchildren, I had been trying to get them involved in making art quilts, and so I developed a technique I called, ‘from coloring book to fiber art,’” Graber said. “So they could color a picture and then make it using fiber.”

Jackie Watkins, a Madison-based artist, said she designed several quilts, including one based on a Patricia Neely-Dorsey poem and another representing an Alice Moseley painting. She also displayed one inspired by the Craftsmen’s Guild of Mississippi.

“We did an exhibit at the craftsman’s guild, and I thought, nobody did a quilt for the craftsman’s guild. So let me go ahead and do one,” Watkins said. “And I did everything black on here. And I have a daughter, and she has a friend – they’re both painters and artists themselves – and they came in and did the painting on it.”

While some were inspired by existing art, others were inspired by different locales in the state – along with the fabrics they had on hand. A Ridgeland-based artist, Marilyn Rose, said she has been quilting since 1978. She was assigned the final letter “I” in Mississippi, and she chose a design based on the Windsor Ruins in Claiborne County.

“Everybody’s got their own take on the ruins of Windsor,” Rose said. “I made mine because I knew, somewhere in all those yards of fabric that I have at home, that I had a scrap leftover that looked like the top.”

Nancy Losure, a Starkville-based artist and “lapsed” member of the Southern Fiber Artists Group, said she was invited to join the challenge by fellow artist Leanne Green. One of her quilted contributions, she said, was inspired by the first thing she saw after she got off of a plane when she moved to Mississippi from Michigan.

“It was April, and we stepped off the plane from Michigan,” Losure said. “And we were on the beach at some kind of cafe thing, and we were eating crawdads and watching pelicans, and I accepted the job on the spot.”

For another artist, both fabric art and representing Mississippi felt new. Dalia Quay, who moved to Greenwood three years ago, grew up in Romania before moving to Israel and eventually the United States. She recently had to travel back to Israel to care for her aging parents, and she took her quilt with her on the journey to finish it in time for the exhibition.

“This quilt traveled with me to California and to Israel. And I sent it from there and I sent it here,” Quay said. “Now, caring for my elderly parents and being in Israel during the war, this is the most (therapeutic) form of art I’ve ever done in my life. This is so peaceful. It taught me patience. And it was (therapeutic), all the colors.”

“I’m honored to be a part of this group and honored to represent Greenwood,” Quay added.

Director Derek Aaron said the exhibition has been one of the best he’s ever worked with at the Oktibbeha County Heritage Museum. He encouraged the public to come see the show while it is still on display throughout the month.

“Them allowing us to have (this exhibit) for the whole month of January is just wonderful,” Aaron said. “It is beautiful.”

The exhibition is available to view on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays during January at the Oktibbeha County Heritage Museum. Special viewings can also be arranged by calling the museum at (662) 323-0211. The exhibit will be traveling to different venues through 2026. For more information, follow Southern Fiber Artists on Facebook.

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