Recipient Information
Location
Johnson City, Tennessee
Medium
Quilter
Year of Award
2024
Grant or Fellowship
Emerging Traditional Artists Program
Grant Amount
$5,000
Rebecca Tolley is a quilter from Johnson City, Tennessee. Rebecca uses textiles to express and sustain her connections to community, family, and the Appalachian landscape. Completing a quilt-top in 2023 that was started by her step-grandmother in the 1990s reinvigorated her love of textiles and exploration of the medium's embodiment of emotion and meaning. She honors the generational transmission of knowledge, recognizes intentions imbued in cloth and thread and needle, and values textiles’ potential in bridging differences while creating belonging within communities.