Christy Matson: Flowers and Leaves

“Flowers and Leaves begins with a Jacquard-woven tea cloth found in a box of family heirlooms, accompanied by a handwritten note from my grandmother tracing its passage through generations. The cloth dates to the 1830s or 40s and belonged to Sarah Doty Arnold, my fifth great-grandmother, a Quaker woman living in Macedon, New York, within a community shaped by abolitionist networks and early feminist organizing, where radical thought moved through households in letters, meetings, and domestic exchange.”