Skywalker/Skyscraper (Matriarch) is a sculpture by interdisciplinary artist Marie Watt, commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields for the exhibition Daughter/Mother/Ancestor: Threads of Connection open through June 30, 2024. For this towering artwork, Marie Watt solicited blanket donations from the local Indianapolis community and beyond. The attached tags bear the stories behind each blanket, which chronicle both caring and strained relationships between mothers and daughters, connections to ancestors through quilting, grandmotherhood, grief and loss, and chosen families. These stories testify to the incredible sentimental power we can ascribe to blankets and textiles, especially when they are heirlooms. 

Featured here are excerpts from some of the 47 blanket stories that were submitted for this sculpture. 

Jennifer Pitts 
Zionsville, Indiana 
Made in rural Clatonia, Nebraska, ca. 1975 by Verna Holsing (1922-2008) 

Grandma Verna Holsing called this a car blanket, but in fact, it’s a quilt made from Grandpa’s KEY overalls and Dad’s Lee blue jeans. They wore out the fronts growing milo, wheat, corn, and soybeans in the black dirt of Nebraska’s southeast plains. As Mom and Grandma folded clothes on washdays, they’d cull out any pair torn or stained. Though the front sides were shot, the backsides were good. Grandma, industrious and thrifty as any farmwife, cut squares out of the backsides and stacked them up in a box kept next to her Singer machine. When the count was right, she sewed them together for the top layer. 

Dottie King 
Indianapolis, Indiana 
In memory of Candy Vincent & Andy King 

This comforter represents LOVE, the selfless love of one young woman. This woman gave birth to a baby boy on January 13th, 1984. She was unable to properly care for the child, so she placed him up for adoption. A young couple had desperately wanted a child, but after three years of infertility treatments were unable to conceive. They welcomed that newborn baby into their family on January 27th, 1984… The baby’s birth mother who had loved her baby had not only given him the gift of life, but a new home and family, as well as a comforter. This comforter was presented to his adoptive parents as a gift for her baby. 

Sarah Horrigan 
Seattle, Washington 
I made this afghan for my father during his final illness. After he died, my mother gave it back to me. 

I made this afghan and gave it to my parents. I especially like it, as I remember the sweaters and vests that had generated the leftover yarn, some of which were gifts to family members. This afghan was on my father’s bed during his final weeks of life. My mother had taken it to the hospital, where it was on his bed, and then again on the bed in their living room after he had moved to hospice. The holes in the afghan were made both by my father’s fingernails as he plucked at it in his final illness, and also by the claws of Annie the cat, who was often on the bed with him. After my father’s death, my mother sent me a photo of him in his bed with the afghan covering him, with a note that said it had comforted him in his final days. 

Skywalker/Skyscraper (Matriarch) is one of many textile arts that you will find in Daughter/Mother/Ancestor: Threads of Connection. The exhibition features historic and contemporary works from the IMA at Newfields' global collections and explores the ways that women artists preserve intergenerational skill-sharing, manifest acts of care, and materialize familial love through longstanding traditions in textiles. You will find the exhibition on Floor 2 of the IMA Galleries. It is included with general admission and free for members.  

Exhibition Credits:

Daughter/Mother/Ancestor: Threads of Connection is made possible by The Anna S. White Endowed Fund for Contemporary Art. 

Image Credits:

Marie Watt (American, Seneca, Turtle Clan, b. 1967), Skywalker/Skyscraper (Matriarch), 2023, reclaimed blankets, steel, and paper tags, 96 × 24 × 24 in. Commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, General Endowed Discretionary Art Fund, Museum Accession by Exchange. © Marie Watt. Photo by Kevin McConnell. 

Individual blanket photos by Kevin McConnell.