Through her academic work and creative practice, Dr. Marion Coe sheds light on the often-overlooked realm of “women’s crafts” and their profound cultural significance. Specializing in the textiles of prehistoric hunter-gatherers in the U.S. Desert West and Southeast, Marion’s work delves into the ecological practices, social dynamics, and gender identity within ancient communities.
Textile Society of America (TSA): Hello, Marion! Would you share a bit about your work process and inspiration.
Marion Coe (MC): I’m an archaeologist and an artist, and in both spheres, I interact with textiles in different ways. As an archaeologist, my primary expertise is perishable artifacts, particularly string and basketry, and in a new direction, footwear. There are few of us “textiles” or “fibers” folks in archaeology, partly because the material class is so rare—it only preserves in limited conditions—but also because of a traditionally biased downplay of women’s crafts in general. So, my work focuses on these artifacts in the context of gender and the close interaction between people and wild plants.
In the sphere of art, my work isn’t textiles per se, but rather, some of the concepts behind my art may be an extension of my archaeological work. My most recent work pulls in some of the stylistic methods characteristic of archaeological illustration, which I also practice professionally. Conceptually, my art partly addresses the duality of wild plant-like forms within a bounded geographical feature. This is something that hunter-gatherers would have observed and controlled when gathering plants for textiles. A side project that I’m also working on is historic embroidery, which is finishing off 1930s-1940s kit embroidery projects that were just never completed by their maker. Kit embroidery is a vernacular craft that isn’t really talked about in the context of art, but it’s an intimate domestic activity that women were engaging in for decades.
TSA: What is your first or favorite textile memory?
MC: My maternal grandmothers worked closely with textiles. My great grandmother was a seamstress by profession and by hobby from the 1930s 1990s when she switched over to quilting, two-dimensional textiles. She made all of my and my sisters Halloween costumes growing up and costumes for school plays in middle school. My grandmother is an award winning master quilter whose specialty is Baltimore album quilts. Growing up, my earliest textile memory (in addition to seeing my grandmother as the emergency physician for my teddy bear) was when my grandmother and aunt surprised me with a whole new, red and yellow polka-dotted bedspread, pillow case, and curtains set they made. I was probably around 3 years old, and those were the first colors I remember clicking with.
TSA: Does your work tend to reflect a communal process or more of an individual practice (or both)?
MC: My personal artwork is an individual practice. Long hours drawing repetitive lines. My side vernacular embroidery project, which I see as background research for a future not-yet-visualized art project, is a strange interpretation of a communal process. I’m collaborating with a person who started a project decades ago and for whatever reason, never finished it. Our styles are a little different, our colors are a little different, but I see it as a communal process. In my discussions of textiles and fiber artifacts from an archaeological perspective, I absolutely address the communal aspect of textiles. The apprenticeship required, the communities of practice, and the interaction between people, plants, and their stuff is a communal process.
TSA: Do you encounter any misconceptions about your work / textiles and how do you address these?
MC: Textiles are traditionally considered “women’s work” and sometimes this is said dismissively, at least in archaeological and social contexts. So much so, that archaeologists have largely ignored the roles of women in prehistoric communities in manufacturing textiles and other organic tools, even when well-preserved material culture is present! This lack of interest in archaeology may because of poor preservation of materials, bias toward women’s crafts, but also potentially a bias toward utilitarian, everyday objects. Textiles have always been an intimate part of everyday life, so perhaps we take advantage of the skill and the people who made/make it. Another misconception of textiles in the context of archaeology addresses this “women’s work” aspect: everyone made fiber tools and were reliant on feminine crafts, so it is certainly oversimplifying the entire material class to ascribe it one gender.
TSA: What projects are you currently working on / looking forward to?
MC: I’m currently working on a lot of projects related to textiles. I’m continuing to analyze basketry from Utah and Nevada. I’m also continuing on a collaborative project on hide footwear in the Great Basin, which is potentially an under-recognized textile. I also am working with a collection of textiles from the Ozarks which include woven matting and turkey feather blankets. I recently began working as an assistant professor and lab director of archaeological and ethnographic collections at Marshall University in West Virginia. The archaeological collections don’t have any textiles (although our ethnographic materials do!), but we have lots of materials that are indirect evidence for textiles, like awls, spindle whorls, and bone and shell beads. My future projects on these collections will address plant and hide working. In my art, my future projects will incorporate textile- associated wild plants directly into my two-dimensional and embroidery-based work. In West Virginia and in Appalachia in general, there is a big interest in crafts and the oral tradition aspect of teaching those crafts. So, I have received a lot of encouragement to connect my archaeological work and artist work more directly, to combine those two spheres.
Dr. Marion Coe is an assistant professor of anthropology at Marshall University. She is an archaeologist and artist with a research focus on the textiles of prehistoric hunter-gatherers in the U.S. Desert West and Southeast. Her textile research reconstructs ecological practices, social interaction, and gender identity in small-scale communities. Marion’s professional work focuses on basketry and cordage from Great Basin rock shelters, Ozark textiles, prehistoric footwear, and fibers analysis. She earned her Ph.D. (2020) and MA (2012) in anthropology from Texas A&M University, and her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art (2008) in anthropology and painting. Marion has worked on archaeological field and lab projects across North America in the Great Basin, Snake River Plain, Texas, Alaska, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Maryland. Her interest in textiles, botany, ecological adaptation, context, and time has played a key role her artwork. Much of Marion’s work utilizes technical tools of scientific illustration—pen and ink lines building a textural symbology—which conceptually address topics of duality and plant ecology, a key aspect to gathering textile plants in the wild. Her work has been displayed in Maryland, Texas, and West Virginia.
Website: https://www.marioncoe.art/
Instagram: @marion_coe_art
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