Claire Oliver Gallery is pleased to present We’re Still Here: Quilted Works Curated by Carolyn Mazloomi, an exhibition that surveys quilted works curated by renowned quilt-maker, historian, and curator Carolyn Mazloomi. On view November 13, 2026 - January 7, 2027, the exhibition brings together the work of fifteen quilt artists Alita Aldridge, Lauren Austin, Gwendolyn Aqui Brooks, Donna Chambers, Carolyn Crump, Renee Fleuranges-Valdes, L’Merchie Frazier, Myrah Brown Green, Sylvia Hernandez, Viola Burley Leak, Cynthia Lockhart, Ed Johnetta Miller, Rosy Petri, Josie Love Roebuck, and April Anue Shipp, each offering a distinct visual voice within the shared language of textile and quilted art. Under Mazloomi's curation, the show surveys the 40 year arc of the Women of Color Quilter’s Network, which she founded in 1985. Each artist brings a unique approach to material, pattern, and narrative, positioning quilting as both a historical craft and a vital contemporary art form.
“All of the work I make and the work of my fellow quilters deals with Black history and material culture,” states Mazloomi. “This exhibition is our way of saying that our history cannot be erased, by any politician or revisionist force, our work will always showcase our triumphs, suffering, creativity, courage, bravery and genius of my people. Black history is American History.”
We're Still Here continues Claire Oliver Gallery's ongoing commitment to championing artists working in fiber and textile-based media, and to expanding the critical and commercial visibility of quilting within the contemporary art world. Carolyn Mazloomi founded the Women of Color Quilters Network (WCQN), after placing an advertisement in Quilter's Newsletter Magazine seeking correspondence with other Black quilters who shared her frustration at working in isolation. The response led to a small founding circle, including Mazloomi, Claire E. Carter, and aRma Carter, that grew into a national non-profit organization whose mission is to educate, preserve, exhibit, promote, and document quilts made by African Americans. At its peak, WCQN had as many as 1,700 members nationwide. A trained aerospace engineer who had previously founded the African American Quilt Guild of Los Angeles in 1981, Mazloomi has spent four decades bringing the unrecognized contributions of Black quilt artists to museums, scholars, and the public, curating dozens of exhibitions and authoring multiple books on the subject. In 2014, she was named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts, the nation's highest honor for traditional and folk arts.
