Dorothy C. Straughter: Resilience | May 23–June 20, 2026
The exhibition Resilience opens at Woman Made Gallery on May 23 from 5 to 8 p.m. with an artist reception, and the work remains on view through June 20, 2026.
Viewers will encounter the powerful work of Dorothy C. Straughter through the Resilience quilt, a moving textile piece that honors survival, collective memory, and the enduring strength of women and marginalized communities. Through layered fabrics, hand-stitched details, and symbolic patterns, Straughter transforms quilting into both an artistic and historical practice, using the medium to preserve stories of perseverance and healing.
The quilt stands not only as a visual artwork, but also as a testament to resilience across generations, inviting audiences to reflect on how care, creativity, and community can become acts of resistance and restoration.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Dorothy C. Straughter’s Resilience is a meditation on collective strength, healing, and the sustaining power of women’s voices. Using leaf shapes as both symbol and imprint, Straughter embedded words contributed by the Woman Made Gallery community into the fabric of the work, creating a living archive of shared experience, affirmation, and survival. Each leaf carries the imprint of language transformed into memory, growth, and renewal.
At the center of the quilt, a female figure levitates the universe in one hand, embodying the spiritual, emotional, and generational labor women carry across time and space. In her other hand, she raises a flower — a symbol of the earth’s enduring power to nurture, restore, and provide abundance. Together, these gestures speak to the balance between cosmic responsibility and earthly grounding, reminding viewers that resilience is both expansive and deeply rooted.
Through layered textiles, symbolic forms, and communal participation, Resilience honors women as caretakers of culture, protectors of the earth, and architects of hope. The quilt becomes more than an object; it is a collective testimony to endurance, interconnectedness, and the transformative power of community.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Dorothy C. Straughter is an occupational therapist with a master’s degree in biological science who came to quilting after a neighbor allowed her to explore and sleep under an Underground Railroad quilt. The experience gave her a deep connection to the ancestors who reportedly used quilts as symbols of escape routes on the Underground Railroad.
Her quilts tell stories from histories that are often neglected or erased. In addition to themes related to the Underground Railroad and the Great Migration, she has created quilts inspired by research into Negrobilia — collectibles and artifacts that reveal painful stereotypes of African Americans, particularly in 20th-century advertising. Much of her research was conducted at Stony Island Arts Bank, where she gained historical perspectives that are difficult to find elsewhere.
Of particular interest to her is the Edward J. Williams Collection, which contains more than 4,500 objects and artifacts documenting the experiences and struggles of African Americans throughout history. Edward Williams initially began purchasing racist ephemera from antique and secondhand stores in an effort to remove it from circulation.
All of Straughter’s quilts are rooted in historical research. Each piece is carefully designed and assembled with painstaking attention to detail on both the front and back.
Her quilts have been featured at the Art Institute of Chicago, Beverly Arts Center, Beverly Art Walk, Museum of Science and Industry, Hyde Park Art Center, Open House Chicago, Adler Planetarium — where one of her works is part of the permanent collection and on permanent display — as well as Woman Made Gallery and the Beverly Arts Alliance Pandemograms exhibition.
© Dorothy C. Straughter