Ed Johnetta Miller of Hartford, CT, is recognized as one of the most creative and colorful improvisational quiltmakers in the United States. Her quilts can be found in both corporate and private collections as well as many important museums, including the National Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington.
Miller told Producer Dave Fraser that quilting studiously day after day gives her a renewed anticipation of what beauty will evolve from it, and he brings us her story.
Learn the story behind Miller’s unique first name in a digital exclusive interview.
This interview originally aired on February 17, 2022.
Read the full transcript:
Zydalis Bauer, Connecting Point: Ed Johnetta Miller of Hartford, Connecticut, is recognized as one of the most creative and colorful improvisational quilt makers in the United States.
Her quilts can be found in both corporate and private collections, as well as many important museums, including the National Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington.
She told producer Dave Fraser recently that quilting studiously day after day, gives her a renewed anticipation of what beauty will evolve from it, and he brings us her story.
Ed Johnetta Miller: Quilting has become an absolute passion for me, and I absolutely love it.
Dave Fraser, Connecting Point: From her third floor studio in her historic home in Hartford’s Blue Hills neighborhood, Ed Johnetta Miller makes her way to her sewing machine.
Stacked floor to ceiling around her are shelves of fabric, kimonos, scarfs, and linens. Collections from around the world and around the corner.
Ed Johnetta Miller, Fiber Artist: People just drop off things. They know, you got fabrics, you don’t want to use them, drop them off on Ed Johnetta’s porch.
Dave Fraser: Miller’s career started as a professional weaver, but for the past 30 plus years, quilting has become her passion. Today, she is considered to be one of the most creative and colorful improvisational quilt makers in the United States.
Ed Johnetta Miller: Weaving was structural. If I wound threads, thousands of threads, and I sat there and I threaded my loom. And then in the middle of the loom, there is this little bud, bump there, knowing that it’s an error. I have to take all of that out, start again.
And in quilting, there are no bumps. If I look at it and if it doesn’t make my heart sing, I’ll go upstairs, and I cut it up and start all over again.
Dave Fraser: As a child growing up in Rhode Island, her parents encouraged her to enter a more practical profession, saying art was financially risky. But Miller fell in love with fiber art.
Her Aunt Dora, a nurse who quilted and sewed in the evenings, took her to museums, craft fairs, and the nearby Rhode Island School of Design.
Ed Johnetta Miller: She taught me how to do so many wonderful things when I was very, very young. And she has — had followed my career until she passed away several years ago and was so proud that I took that little nourishing piece of my life and just had it explode.
Dave Fraser: As an African American woman, Miller has experienced many injustices throughout her life. During the pandemic, she began to make a list of all the things that have happened to her and created a quilt called “I Have Known Injustice All My Life.”
Ed Johnetta Miller: So, I got it out. I got it out through my writing. I got it out then through doing my quilt.
Dave Fraser: Her piece for the Recent Textile Center in Minneapolis weaves Black Lives Matter newspaper headlines and other motifs into bold red, white, and black geometric patterns. The colors, Miller says, is the blood we’ve shared and the blackness of us.
Ed Johnetta Miller: I was glued to watching TV. The news. All I would watch is the news. It became more and more and more angry. So, that’s why I said, “I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to do something.”
And doing something through telling my story of injustices through my quilts. Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter. It’s so, so important, and we can never forget that.
Ok, so now what they’re going to do, I told them…
Dave Fraser: In her trademark hand-painted silk headscarves and long dreadlocks, Miller spends much of her time introducing young people to quilting.
On this day, she visited the Martin Luther King Junior Middle School in Hartford to help students with a quilt they will make for their school.
Ed Johnetta Miller: I want to impress upon young people, know your heritage. And that’s why I teach at many, many different schools to talk about me as an artist, about my trials and tribulations as becoming an artist, how you can do whatever you want to do. Got to put forth the effort. Do a good job at it and be kind.
Dave Fraser: Miller’s work can be found in museums and private collections around the world, as well as in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.
She says as long as she is able, she plans to continue to enjoy the freedom, movement, and power given to creating the sculpture of the cloth.
Ed Johnetta Miller: I love the feel, I love the smell, I love the colors. I mean, it just…quilting just takes over my life.
