Artist Statement

River Forest Berry’s practice explores the intersections of memory, material, and place through quilts and family photographs. Rooted in both traditional and experimental fiber practices, her work asks how memory is constructed, preserved, and transmitted across generations. For Berry, quilting is more than fabric stitched together; it is storytelling, an archival practice, and a vessel for lived experience.

Drawing on family traditions passed down from her Nana, who taught her to sew, Berry reinterprets quilting, lace, and weaving as ways of engaging with memory. She centers reuse through secondhand and natural materials, which carry embedded histories of labor and care. Performative gestures of ripping, cutting, pulling, and stitching further emphasize the physical effort and time that define fiber work.

By combining craft with performance and installation, Berry positions quilts not only as carriers of the past but also as active sites of transformation, blurring the boundaries between memory, tradition, object and action, labor and care.