Suzanne Stoltenberg has been hauling this project all over Talbot County.
There are paper triangles, poster board signs, prompts, pens, glue, tape, and the fabric backing that will eventually hold it all together. There is also Stoltenberg, sitting behind a table, convincing people they really do have something worth writing down.
Stoltenberg, a member of the Working Artists Forum, is leading a public project tied to Talbot250 in which people are invited to write a few lines on individual paper quilt pieces. Those pieces will become a large paper quilt that will be displayed at the Market at Dover Station in Easton when a Talbot 250-themed exhibit opens in May.
Before that happens, though, Stoltenberg is still collecting memories and thoughts.
There was a time when she realized she would need more than 200 pieces to create the project, this alarmed her.
But then people started writing, and that perspective changed. “The truth is, it has been fun. It’s been fascinating. It’s been a history lesson. I’ve met so many interesting people.”
Some write about what they love about Talbot County. Some write about what life was like here years ago. Some honor a person who changed their life. Some write about farming, working on the water, a town they grew up in, a school, a family member, a coach, or a piece of county history they do not want forgotten.
The idea began at a general Working Artists Forum meeting, when members were being asked to come up with ideas for future exhibits. Stoltenberg had been following Talbot250 and noticed that organizations around the county were beginning to create events tied to the semiquincentennial.
“When I saw that, I thought, ‘That’s a great idea,’” she said. “We can do something different, in addition to painting and doing scenes from Talbot, which will also be a part of our contribution.”
That ‘something different’ turned into a larger exhibition effort. Diane DuBois Mullaly suggested Dover Station as the location. Maggie Sarfati joined in. Stoltenberg took charge of the quilt, which became the public piece of the project.
As for why a paper quilt, Stoltenberg’s response was, “It’s hard to write on fabric.”
So people are writing on paper shapes that can actually hold ink and be read, and those shapes are being attached to a fabric backing. Stoltenberg has spent plenty of time testing glues, testing tape, and figuring out how the whole thing should be laid out.
She also realized she had to consider the simple question of whether anyone would be able to read it once it was hanging on the wall.
“I planned to have four down and three across,” she said. “But then I laid it all out…and I said, ‘Now wait a minute. I don’t think I can read the one up there.’”
So that had to be rethought.
That practical side of Stoltenberg comes through a lot when she talks about the project. Yes, it is art. Yes, it is public art. But it is also a table, some prompts, and one person trying to get another person to stop for a minute and remember something.
So far, she’s taken it to Water’s Edge Museum during Black History Month, to the library several times, to the YMCA, and to Working Artists Forum gatherings. Sometimes she plans ahead. Sometimes, she just has the materials in the car and brings them out if the opportunity feels right.
And along the way, she has learned that most people need a little push.
“When people approach the table, what I tell them first is, you could do anything, because it has to come from you, and it should be more personal,” she said. “
She gives them prompts and paper to draft something if they need it, but mostly she talks with them until something surfaces. A person. A place. A story from childhood. A work history. A town. A memory that has probably been sitting there for years without anybody asking for it.
Once they put pen to paper, the stories can be remarkable.
“What has happened, it’s taken a life of its own,” she said, “because the stories are incredible and fascinating.” Some are deeply personal—a coach who changed someone’s life. A woman who helped a person get off drugs. A grandmother who raised them. Somebody who showed up when it mattered.
Other messages are more directly historical. These include the first police commissioner, Walter Chase, who wrote about attending segregated schools, and a woman who told her she had gone to a one-room schoolhouse in Copperville.
Not every entry is dramatic, and Stoltenberg is fine with that. Some are simply lovely, she said. People writing that they moved here years ago and found good friends. Someone remembering rowing on the Choptank. Someone appreciating what they love about our county.
Stoltenberg wrote one herself, acknowledging people who stood out to her. “When we first moved here, a neighbor I hadn’t met brought a hot apple pie over. And the guy across the street, when it snowed, plowed my driveway without even asking.”
That’s the kind of thing that keeps showing up. Not official history exactly, though some of that is there too. More of the history people carry around with them. The lived-in kind. The story of a place told through the people who made it feel like home, or who helped shape a life in some quiet way.
The mix of the stories and people matters to Stoltenberg. She has made a point of going after them.
She has tried to include teens through the Academy Art Museum and the library. She has gone to Black History Month events because she wanted different voices represented. She has gone to the senior center. She has gone to the Y. She wants the finished piece to reflect more than one age group, one neighborhood, or one slice of county life.
The quilt will be hung when the exhibit opens on May 2 at the Market at Dover Station. Stoltenberg said there will also be another chance that day for people to take part by helping create a smaller quilt on site.
So even then, it will not quite be finished.
For now, she is still in the collecting stage, still out there with her table and her prompts, still trying to get people past that first instinct to say they do not know what to write.
Asked what she hopes people will feel when they see the finished quilt, Stoltenberg said, “I think they’re going to feel like we’re part of a community and that people are listening and want to hear about them.”
She does not try to overstate it beyond that.
“I think it says what it says itself without me thinking what I’d like it to say,” she said.
Still, she said, if there is one thing she keeps hearing from those who contributed, it is this: “This is an excellent area to live. There’s great beauty. There’s a huge, rich history… no matter how diverse we really get along, we’re good neighbors.”
This Saturday, she’s hoping to hear more of it.” Stoltenberg will be collecting stories from 9 a.m. to noon at the grand opening of the new St. Michaels Library and from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. People do not need to be artists. They do not need to be writers. They just need a memory.