![]() Regan’s stitched narratives expanded beyond her personal emotional explorations to incorporate a broad multitude of influences and purposes. In her untitled essay about The Garden of Marriage, Regan writes, “the salvage art that is quilting-using every bit and scrap you can lay your hands on to make something of beauty, something to warm the body, or the soul-has salvaged a life, or a marriage, and turned it into something true and permanent to delight the eye, to assimilate into the new life lived after the loss.” The act of creating stitched narratives provided her with a sense of refuge and focus as she rebuilt her life. ![]() Initially, her stitched narratives were a security blanket for her to grieve the loss of her old life, express longstanding anger and resentment toward her husband, as well as come to grips with her new identity as a single, middle-aged woman. The metaphor of the quilt-salvaging bits and pieces to make something new, slashing, stitching-descended-I lived in the metaphor, and interests, images, feelings that in my former life had social outlets poured into my work.” “I was writing a book on quilts when my life as I had known it vanished. Regan immersed herself into the creation of work to unpack the many emotions she was feeling and retain what remained of her life. Regan soon revisited quiltmaking, but threaded in poetry and symbolism to create “stitched narratives”-these artworks were made to be displayed on walls rather than beds. The weight of her loss and its aftermath eventually became too much to transcribe. Regan wrote poetry to narrate womanhood within the contexts of patriarchal power. She struggled with the loss of her married life and wide array of emotions, and turned to art to exhaust her anguish. When she divorced in 1988, Regan’s conception of herself in the world dramatically changed. Her poetry reflects anger as was frequently the case with women of her generation, her needs were secondary to her husband’s career, and her writing expressed the torment. Despite seemingly having it all-three healthy children and comfortable wealth-Jennifer Regan was troubled about her life. ![]() Regan also worked actively with the Junior Group at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. The same year, she edited a book of short stories with her dear friend Miriam Dow, entitled Invisible Enemies. ![]() In the late 1980s she conducted research for a book she authored entitled AMERICAN QUILTS: A Sample of Quilts and Their Stories,” published in 1989. ![]() In the 1970s, during Ned Regan’s tenure as County Executive, the pair was dubbed “Buffalo’s Kennedys.” In the 1960s, Jennifer Regan became well established as a writer in the Buffalo community she published poetry in numerous journals, and reviewed books for the Buffalo News. Regan, who later served as Erie County Executive and New York State Comptroller.Īs a highly regarded political family, the Regans were well-known throughout Western New York. Regan returned to Buffalo, getting her master’s degree from the University at Buffalo in English literature. For much of her early life, Jennifer Regan lived what many would consider to be the “American Dream.” Born and raised in Orchard Park, she graduated from Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1956. The stitched narratives of Jennifer Regan explore the tension between life’s dualities-triumph and tragedy, mourning and celebration, death and rebirth-as a reminder that all these experiences can exist simultaneously throughout the feminine experience. Salvaged: The Stitched Narratives of Jennifer Regan will be on view from September 14th, 2018, - January 6th, 2019. ![]()
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