Amazing. Beautiful. Stunning. Exquisite. These are terms I never thought anyone would ever say about my quilts. But these were just a few of the incredibly complimentary terms I had people share with me during the 2023 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, where I had ten quilts from my Stories from the South Atlantic Ocean quilt collection on display in the Exhibit Hall, December 11-14, 2023.

And this wasn’t the first time I had quilts on display at the AGU Fall Meeting!

In 2021, I had my entire 9-quilt collection Stitching Hope for the Louisiana Coast in the Exhibit Hall of the Fall Meeting, which was an ideal location for a display as the conference was held in New Orleans, LA (see my blog post, Coastal optimism quilts journey to Louisiana). Just four months after that AGU meeting, I joined the scientific research vessel JOIDES Resolution (Expedition 390, April-June 2022). Based upon the incredibly positive response I’ve received to my Louisiana quilts, I decided I would generate a few new quilts to tell the stories of living and working at sea as part of my personal science communication and outreach mission post-expedition. But what originally started as a plan to create 2-3 quilts ended up being 19(!) quilts total in the Stories from the South Atlantic Ocean collection.

Generating the stories, selecting the fabric, designing the layout – all of these quilting activities and more were so much fun as the collection was coming together. There was so much I wanted to share about being at sea, that the number of stories I wanted to tell kept growing, as did the number of quilts I was generating. Then I started doing some data visualizations in the quilts, creating games for those that see the quilts to play, incorporating traditional quilting patterns and techniques… all along, the quilting experience was getting more and more creative, fun and enjoyable.

Fast-forward to March 2023, when the National Science Foundation announced the Non-Renewal of the JOIDES Resolution Operations and Maintenance Cooperative Agreement. This meant that the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) would be coming to an end, and NSF would no longer be supporting scientific ocean drilling activities with the ship JOIDES Resolution. There have been and continue to be so many reactions to this news within the scientific community and efforts to very quickly find a way to move forward with deep-sea ocean exploration via continuous coring. For me, my South Atlantic Ocean quilts took on a sense of urgency and purpose that I didn’t have prior to the announcement. Sure, the legacy cores in the three international core repositories would still be available for scientists to sample and publish results for decades to come, but how would the “stories” of scientific ocean drilling, beyond the scientific advancements, continue in the absence of JOIDES Resolution? And who would tell the stories? And how?

The 2023 AGU Fall Meeting would be the last fall meeting with JOIDES Resolution still operating as part of IODP. I decided to reach out to AGU to see if it would be possible to share my quilts again – this time, sharing the quilts telling stories of scientific ocean drilling. The AGU staff was incredibly supportive of this idea and wonderful to work with, yet again. We coordinated to have a selection of ten quilts from the collection on display. See the video below for the final result! (*Note the video has no audio)

The entire quilt collection, along with photos and descriptions of each quilt, can be found online: https://www.sciodquilts.studio/

The response to the quilts from AGU meeting attendees was beyond what I expected, all so kind and supportive. In addition to general conversations I had about outreach and science/art connections, these comments are some that rise to the top of my favorites:

• You have no idea how happy it makes me to see these quilts here
• These quilts bring the biggest smile to my face
• Are the quilts for sale?
• I was on my way to see the puppies but got distracted by the quilts and had to stop
• I keep coming back to see the quilts, as this is my peaceful place to escape all the chaos of the meeting
• My grandmother would never forgive me if I didn’t send her a photo of every one of these quilts

I am so thankful to have had this opportunity at the AGU Fall Meeting to share the quilts, and I was encouraged to see so many people taking photos and telling me of their plans to share the stories behind these quilts – which is exactly what I want to happen! Quilts are generational, and my hope is that these quilts and their stories of scientific ocean drilling become part of the IODP legacy shared for years to come.

I look forward to the next opportunity to share these quilted stories from JOIDES Resolution Expedition 390, and to additional creative displays at the AGU Fall Meeting!

I especially would like to thank the staff with AGU Meetings, Meeting Priorities, Freeman, and the Moscone Center, who were incredible to work with and provided so much support to make my quilt display at the Fall Meeting happen.