When the trouble began, 2021, Secondhand bed frame, local Kansas clay, local soil, native tallgrass prairie seed, PVC pipe, grow lights, plastic sheeting

The bed is covered with a clay representation of the quilt pattern often called “Kansas Troubles” which refers to the tumultuous beginning of Kansas statehood. The quilt pattern is a complicated symbol representing a broken treaty with indigenous tribes that brought white settlers to Kansas in droves as well as the creation of a free state which opposed the spread of slavery. Quilts as historical objects represent community, care, domestic spaces, and women’s work. The repeating squares and triangles are reminiscent of land parceling like that which broke the prairie up into homesteads. The color and cracking of the clay are reminders of the dust bowl and loss of topsoil. Now a site for native prairie seeds, we see both their tenacity and fragility in their struggle to survive of the clay surfaces, while thriving in the native soil.