In the spring of 2018, I paused on the steep, tightly coiled stairs that lead up to the third floor of Beardsley, catching my breath. I was on my way to a class that I was more excited about than any class I had ever taken in my life, the kind of class for which I had rearranged my entire schedule and waited with bated breath to see the lottery results. It was Black Art: Quilting as Culture, a passion project put together by Professor Allison Dorsey, and I was one of twelve lucky students who had the opportunity to attend. The class was taught jointly by Professor Dorsey and Alicia Ruley-Nock, a local Black quilter who would be teaching us the basics of quilting.
The class was transformative for me. I learned a landslide of information from Professor Dorsey, which shifted the way that I thought about and understood art. I grew up on the Dena’ina Athabascan land known as…
