Leslie Rogers began quilting at age seven, learning from a member of her hometown guild at their local quilt shop. She later co-founded a puppet theater, moving into research-based performances about forgotten histories of quilts, blocks, quilters, and textile traditions.
Her plant-based work spans dinner events and dyes, including natural dye research using soil-extracted metals, patinas, foraged tannins, and a community quilting workshop series using fabrics dyed from her educational garden.
She holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and works as an artist and educator across community and university settings. She lives and works in Detroit.
PRESENTATION DETAILS
Mischief Quilts
Friday 04/30/27: 2pm (Zoo Auditorium)
In this talk, Rogers moves through works from her research-based quilting practice. A quilt made of fire avenges the last widely suspected vampire in America. An opera singer voices the spirit of a quilt block from Richmond, Virginia. A dancing, helium-filled quilt takes the shape of a hot air balloon. A milkweed-stuffed quilt is buoyant enough to serve as a raft, documenting an aspiring Milkweed Baron's WWII foraging campaign. A kaleidoscope-designed quilt sings the story of its making. A crowdsurfing performance shares the history of a familiar quilt block believed to be based on stolen cat mummies from Egypt.
