An elderly slave, a pregnant mother and Whoopi Goldberg are among the women represented in the exhibition "Daughters of the Cloth: Quilt Portraits," which features traditional patchwork and appliqué quilts created by graduate student Heather Williams.
The exhibition will be on view at the Small Space Gallery, 70 Audubon St. in New Haven, throughout the month of February.
Williams, who was born in Jamaica, uses African prints and other fabrics, photographs and other embellishments in her quilted wall hangings, which depict cultural representations from America, Africa and the West Indies.
A doctoral student in American studies, Williams is a self-taught quilter. Since 1993 her pieces have been exhibited in New York, Ohio and Connecticut. Last summer, she taught quilting to members of the New Haven community as a Yale Presidential Public Service Fellow. She is the state coordinator for the Freedom Trail Quilt Project, an effort to create a quilt representing over 70 of Connecticut's African-American historical sites.
The Small Space Gallery is open Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission is free. For further information, call 624-5899.