Discarded Bins of Abundance
A Conversation With Coulter Fussell and Lauren Kennedy
Curator and gallerist Lauren Kennedy speaks with Coulter Fussell about the work in Side by Side, on view at MARCH from June 12 through July 25, 2025.
LAUREN KENNEDY
I have been so enamored with your work ever since I first encountered it. There is something dreamy about your quilted pieces that feels both familiar and surprising, living in this space between painting and sculpture. Can you tell me how your background in painting mingles with the quilting traditions you use to construct the works?
COULTER FUSSELL
Well, I appreciate you saying “dreamy” because that’s how I see things and it’s a part of my worldview that I try to get across in my work. Not “dreamy” in terms of haziness or lacking clarity, although that’s a cool visual effect and I definitely go for that a lot when setting a work’s speed and tone — but more in terms of revealed connections, vague or faulty memory and absurdity. As a kid, Alice in Wonderland made way more sense to me than it probably should have!
I think all quilts, not just mine, live in a space between painting and sculpture. The real Quilters — and I say that with a capital Q — don’t come at their artwork from that angle, though, as it’s quilts first for them. They see quilts as the supreme art form – the top of the pyramid. Their case can certainly be argued but they wouldn’t bother to argue it because they know it as fact! But, for me, the painting I did in my 20’s comes into play a lot less than my lifetime of looking at works by artists I admire. So, when I make my works, I’m not really thinking that I’m doing a fabric version of mixing paint on a palette. I’m thinking more like “piece an area so big that it leaves Bo Bartlett’s room for the viewer, tailor the edges fine enough to get near DX Gordy’s earth-bound elegance, sew something cheap and human right in the middle of the prettiest spot like Mike Howard’s quip at the pretentious bullshit…” These are painters and ceramicists I admire and grew up around. I channel various things from artists I love.
Coulter Fussell
Last Day, 2024
Digital screenshot on chiffon, cotton batting, neon polyester, and thread on panel
30 x 18 x 1 inch
Everything technical – the nitty gritty of actually making the work – I learned in sewing. Quilting is difficult. It’s a whole language and a feat of engineering. It requires obsession and drive and the ability to take it on the chin and keep trying when it humbles you. Painting provides the compositional, contextual and narrative prompts. Quilting provides the life lesson, mystery and sparks the fire in me. One is geometry, the other is algebra. And they switch those places often.
KENNEDY
Let’s talk more about this new body of work on view at MARCH and Sheet Cake right now. The Snapchat images you have started using bring up that sense of familiarity again for me, thinking about rowdy country kids running around, making a little trouble and having a big time. How did these Snapchat images come to be incorporated into the work and what draws you to these images? How do you see them relating to the other quilt series you’ve been making like the War Quilts and River Raft Quilts?
FUSSELL
My father is a folklorist so I grew up in a world of documentary. On top of that, he is a Southern folklorist specializing in our regions rural craftways and folk traditions so nothing was too meager of content or material to be considered a profound reflection of the heart of humanity. So, in terms of the Snapchat videos, they may be fast, cheap and out of control but they’re us! In fact, they may be more us because of those qualities. And my kids have a lot of them. I already work in the discarded bins of abundance with the thrown away fabrics. The soon-to-be deleted videos were just more items in the bin.
The content of the videos exists in the realms of both memory and discovery for me. I remember doing exactly the things the kids are doing in the videos but not in the same place or the same time. So, I get a glimpse into a different world that feels like mine. An alternate reality. It’s like a combo of cultural archiving, voyeurism and a proud mother’s love. And, Lauren – speaking Mama to Mama — it’s also a way for me to keep an eye on my kids! The big, lush wilds of Yalobusha County, Mississippi has a surprising lot of trouble to offer. These country kids don’t slow down. They’re tough, capable, active and bucking Gen Z/Alpha generalizations, for sure.
The Snapchat works are a departure from the War Quilts and the River Raft Quilts in that I’m more of a secondary character in the Snapchat works. I play a supporting role, narratively. With the Snapchat works, the kids have their own defiant tales and voices and that’s about as teenager as it gets.
Coulter Fussell, Jump School, 2021 from the War Quilts series.
KENNEDY
Oh, I love hearing how your motherhood journey comes into play here, because I reckon nothing describes being a mom better than playing a supporting role. I also appreciate the connection to discarded materials and how you see these soon to be deleted videos as an extension of that. Tell me more about the “discarded bins of abundance”… I understand that you exclusively use donated materials dropped off at your studio door in Water Valley, Mississippi. Being in your studio recently and seeing the incredible amount of materials everywhere, I found myself thinking about how much we accumulate over time and how often things are discarded. But here you are giving these materials a new and different life. How did this aspect of your studio practice develop? And what’s the weirdest material that’s been dropped off at the studio?
FUSSELL
In the beginning, it was an entirely pragmatic decision. I needed the material to be free because I had no money to buy fabric. So, I just used old clothes. This is a textile tale as old as time. But, in a true case of the material changing the artist, I began to prefer the old material and wouldn’t have used new material if I had the choice. It’s a small town so I never had to officially say out loud “Give me your old clothes and textiles.” Instead, one person saw a quilt I made out of old clothes and it was off to the races. The word was out.
I get lots of great non-fabric material – furniture, sewing machines, doll parts, black walnuts, animal pelts, pheasant feathers, all sorts of stuff. My favorites have been homemade muscadine wine in big mason jars (both red and white), a deer head and three beaver tails (from two different people.)
KENNEDY
Growing up and living in rural towns between Georgia and Mississippi, how do you see the South manifesting in your work?
FUSSELL
Well, there is no me without where I’m from. It most certainly defines me in big and profound ways. I don’t have or want any control over that. I don’t fight it or get mad about it even when it may box me in. The fact is, the South is just going to take up a lot of space in my work as it takes up a lot of space in my life. It would be the same if I were from Alaska or Morocco or Chile. I have no interest in being disconnected from or in denial of my own world. Which is good because I have no choice in the matter anyway! I am who I am where I am.
I grew up in Columbus, Georgia which is a seedy, large city – most of my family lived down the road in Buena Vista, Georgia where my mother grew up. A tiny town – also the home to St EOM’s Pasaquan! All my first cousins grew up in Buena Vista. I lived there the first several years of my life but after that I was mainly there on weekends. So, my River Raft Quilts and War Quilts often allude to a Southern urban life — the cotton mills and military base of Columbus/Fort Benning, Georgia.
When I was 19 or 20, I left for rural Mississippi and never went back. So, of course, there are endless versions of “the South” and I only present the ones I know.
Artistically, I sort of live by this quote from an old writer friend of mine. He was a fireman who taught himself to write in the fire station at night. His name was Larry Brown and he was a regular customer at the diner I waitressed at for years. Larry said, “You take what you’re given, whether it’s the cornfields of the Midwest or the coal mines of West Virginia, and you make your fiction out of it. It’s all you have. And somehow, wherever you are, it always seems to be enough.” ⧫
Coulter Fussell
Little Gold Bow, 2024
Digital screenshot on chiffon, cotton batting, neon polyester, thread, panel, jaquard blanket, gold lamé
14 x 12 inches
Side by Side is on view at MARCH from June 12 through July 25, 2025. Please direct all inquiries to info@marchgallery.org.