Seeds InService: Germinating the Feminist Roots of Hand Papermaking in Chicago

摘要

Artists Melissa Hilliard Potter and Maggie Puckett formed Seeds InService: A Papermaking Institute (SIS) in 2013 to support and connect radical, global, feminist practices and to prevent the erasure of the legacies of the women who preceded them. An ecofeminist, socially engaged art practice, SIS addresses heirloom-seed management, thematic gardening, and hand- papermalcing arts activism. Potter and Puckett aim to reveal the oppressions of women and nature under patriarchal capitalism prevalent across the globe, as well as the ever-strengthening movement of resistance. Their collaborative, public works include Food, Sex and Death, a multi-course meal on the site where the meal and art were harvested, and centered on the theme of local histories of sexual violence and survival; Las Mujeres Zapatistas: Seeds of Resistance, a garden growing Mayan maize and dedicated to Zapatista women of Chiapas, Mexico; and their current Lucy Flower Self-Reliance Garden. In all of their work with SIS, Potter and Puckett focus on propagating rare seeds to make and utilize paper which reveals untold narratives of women's labor and histories.