
A Stitch In Time
A Chautauqua Lake Art-Sci Community Engagement Project on HABs
WHAT: Art/design/craft practitioner, Cynthia Pannucci, is proposing to lead the process of collaboratively designing and making a quilt called A Stitch In Time. The title is from the old saying, “a stitch in time saves nine,” meaning: It’s better to solve a tiny problem right away (with one sewn stitch) to stop it from becoming a much bigger one (that will require nine stitches). This can also be applied to our current situation with global warming which encourages the growth and frequency of HABs (harmful algal blooms) in our beautiful freshwater lakes, including the beloved Chautauqua Lake in New York State.
PURPOSE: Can a group of female, lakeside property-owners learn about the science of HABs through questioning conversations, self-reflection, online research, design, and making, to build trust and camaraderie while creating a collaborative quilt? Cynthia believes this type of fun “social scaffolding” is needed to ensure the community’s investment in science-based research and planning will be sustainable by empowering lake stewardship now and as a model for future generations.
HOW: Most of Chautauqua’s lakeside homes have been family summer residences for many generations, and this unique community was founded in 1874 as “an educational experiment for out-of-school learning.” Project quilt-makers will scour old family photo albums and ask their neighbors for images of fond memories playing in lake waters, as well as images of today’s reality of highly-toxic HABs. Additionally, recent science data and micro images of the harmful blue-green algae that local science researchers have collected in an effort to determine the source(s) of the blooms will be included, along with handwritten phrases expressing a multitude of feelings by the locals.
A MODEL: This collaborative quilt project could be shared at: 4-H Clubs, county fairs, university community Extension Service offices, land trusts, and water/environmental conservation public events; as well as schools, churches, and government offices. However, the climate/global warming thematic issue explored in each quilt could be as varied as health, life-style, outdoor sports, and food sources, as well as the economic costs to communities impacted by floods, wildfires, hurricanes, and rising sea-levels.
BACKGROUND: Cynthia was a summer Artist-in-Residence at Chautauqua in 2022 and was raised a mile from Cayuga Lake, one of New York’s beautiful Finger Lakes. The environment and threats to biodiversity have long been a concern in her personal art. (and See https://ArtSci-Climate.com/environmental/) for details about the three Anthropocene-themed, open-call, international digital print exhibitions she organized for her nonprofit, Art & Science Collaborations, and that were held at the New York Hall of Science. Cynthia’s silk-screened, patchwork quilts won her a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Award in Crafts (1982), a sample selection of which are below.

The New American Quilt, the first major museum exhibition of “art quilts,” was held in 1976 at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City. An image of Cynthia’s Hands & Feet Quilt (above) became the cover of the printed exhibition invitation and also appeared on the inside-cover of the exhibition catalog (which is archived online at: https://digital.craftcouncil.org/digital/collection/p15785coll7/id/1920 )
The catalog had a sizeable amount of text devoted to the QUILTING BEE, noting that it was a huge *social event* of rural American life (and essential platform for information sharing… think: the makerspaces of yesteryear!), and by 1883, 75% of beds in American were covered with quilts. Today art quilts are thriving, there are many U.S. quilt museums, including a new African American Quilt Museum and Textile Academy located in Lawrence, Kansas.
INTERACTIVITY & QUILT DESIGN: When I was designing the order of the patchwork squares before sewing them together, I laid them on my living room floor in Vermont, and often times people would stop-by [people did that back then!] and they’d watch my composing process. Invariably, they would pick-up a pile of the fabric squares and place them down in a different location! Years later, after watching children interact physically with exhibits at science museums, and having experienced the urge of my postman and neighbors to have agency in the composition of my quilt squares, I conceptualized an interactive composing mechanism I called The GRID. It was commissioned in 1992 by the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport, CT.

HOPES & FEARS QUILT: For several years soon after my move from Vermont to New York City in the early 1980s, I did freelance work designing and leading family maker projects at the Staten Island Children’s Museum. These included a collaboration with the poet Cat Doty on several large patch-work wall-quilts with fourth graders and seniors at local Senior Centers. But the most memorable group quilt project was the HOPES & FEARS QUILT with pregnant teens in 1990. It was a culturally enlightening project for me and a poignant result from the girls! (see below)
