Women as older adults are a very underserved population in Madison. Mature women should be celebrated for their wisdom, care of family and community, as well as their seldom-known life accomplishments, but they do not have many support services focused directly for their age group and gender.
“The Memory Collectors: Fighting Alzheimer’s with Art” is a new project that honors women 55 years old and older and gives younger women the wonderful opportunity to engage with, learn and volunteer with this generation in a safe space called the Creator’s Cottage. Memory Collectors is designed especially for women, creative artists and those who want to explore how art aids in well-being, with a focus on quilting and writing.
This group of special Memory Collectors women will have two booths, Booths 659 and 661, at Air Fair on the Square on July 13 and 14 around the Capitol Square. Members welcome the public to view their original, handmade items from artists and everyday women, who will use the financial support for the Creator’s Cottage and for an Oct. 10-15 trip to Alabama to meet and take a class with quilters from the community of Gee’s Bend in the Airing of the Quilts Festival.
Gee’s Bend quilters are Black quilters who are internationally known. Memory Collectors offers services free to its participants, but a non-renewal of a recent grant means that these women must look for other resources and hope that Madison will support their worthy cause.
Catrina Sparkman is the artistic director of the Creator’s Cottage, a maker studio space that invites all women, with a special invitation to women of color, who are in various stages of their writing and creative careers or who have yet to explore their creativity. Memory Collectors is in partnership with the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC), African Americans Fighting Alzheimer’s in Midlife (AA-FAIM) and Badger Rock Community Gardens, which provides fresh foods for their monthly meetings.
African American women lead in Alzheimer’s disease, so the need is greatest with this population. The Creator’s Cottage opened in March 2020, three days before the COVID pandemic, and offered virtual classes. There is also the opportunity to become a member.
Memory Collectors members travelled to Chicago for a vegan meal at Kale My Name, and members are offered vegan/vegetarian meals at all meetings. They visited the museum to be inspired by Faith Ringgold’s exhibition in Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art in 2023 before Ringold, a multimedia artist who is famous for her narrative quilts, passed in 2024. Members of Memory Collectors returned to Madison with more passion to start this art form that many had watched their grandmothers, mothers and aunts utilize in both creative and practical ways.
A wonderful addition will be the opportunity for Madisonians to commission portraits from Alicia Rheal, a Madison artist who is both a volunteer and Memory Collectors member. Rheal has been painting professionally since 1986 when she created her company, Rheal Imagination. Rheal will display her exceptional work and use commissions to help Memory Collectors travel to Gee’s Bend in Alabama.
Visit Booths 659 and 661, pick up information on the Creator’s Cottage, look at the portraits of Rheal and Poet Fabu on display and order something to support this effort.
I work for ADRC/AA-FAIM. I am a proud participant in Memory Collectors. My grandmother Effie quilted. I am not an expert, yet every time I attend Memory Collectors, I am with my grandmother, watching her quilt and feeling happy.
