Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi

Historian, Curator, Author, Lecturer, Artist, Mentor, Founder, and Facilitator — the remarkable and tireless Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi has left her mark on many lives.Trained as an aerospace engineer, Mazloomi turned her sites and tireless efforts in the 1980s to bring the many unrecognized contributions of African American quilt artists to the attention of the American people as well as international art communities.

From the founding of the African-American Quilt Guild of Los Angles in 1981 to the 1985 founding of the Women of Color Quilters Network (WCQN), Mazloomi has been at the forefront of educating the public about the diversity of interpretation, styles and techniques among African American quilters as well as educating a younger generation of African Americans about their own history through the quilts the WCQN members create.Her pictorial narrative quilts make plain her personal themes: family life, women’s rights, political freedom, and musical legacy.Mazloomi’s quilts have been included in over 74 exhibits and she herself has curated 21 extensive exhibits of quilts made by members of the Women of Color Quilters Network, many of them traveling exhibits.“I look at the quilt makers as culture bearers because there’s a long history of quilt making in this country and I want to see it carried forth to the next generation,” Mazloomi explains.“And because most of the stories within the African-American quilt community are narratives and tell the story of our culture, what would be more important than people seeing these quilts and noting history?“It’s important because we as a people have our footprint noted on this canvas called American history, so people have to know the role that we played and that we were here and that we contributed positively to history in this country, so it’s important for that aspect.”