In 2004, Carole Lyles Shaw sent out an invitation to the over 125 members of the African American Art Quilters Listserve to join a unique collaboration project. Within a few months, several members joined this project and began creating a series of Collaboration Quilts. Several of the finished works can be seen in the gallery below.

Our Collaboration Process:
A group of nearly 25 African American ArtQuilters formed groups of 3 or 4 members each. Some of the groups were strangers to each other—having met only virtually through the listserve. Others groups included a mother-daughter team and other friends who knew each other, but had never worked together on an artquilt. Some members are experienced artquilters while others were trying their ‘artistic wings' for the first time. All were welcome into this project because Carole's goal was to stimulate more support for new artists, as well as build more community among members of the listserve.

Each member of the team began an artquilt piece. This may have been a “center” or the beginning may have taken other forms, such as strips or blocks. There were no restrictions on approach. Then, each member sent her/his piece to the next person on the list, and that artist added her contribution or changes, and then sent that piece to the next person in the group. Finally, the completed art quilt circled back to the originating artist who then made additions and changes to complete the piece. One of the rules was that each artist in the circle could actually remove, alter, or change any part of the piece in any way. This was a pretty shocking approach, but Carole's goal was to get people way, way outside of their comfort zone—and it worked!!

At each stage, every group member also created a journal page and forwarded it to their group as they made their contribution to the artquilt. Some of the Journal pages are also shown on the site and are artworks in and of themselves.

Beginning January 2006, some of the completed artquilts will be available for travel to venues in the United States and internationally for display in galleries, museums and other venues. Journals will also be available to travel with the exhibited artquilts. For information, please contact Carole Lyles Shaw (carole@lyles.net) or by phone at (410-913-8539).