Quilt artist inspired to address sexual assault in her work

Valerie Paterson is a creative quilt artist who was in the early stages of working on a book about her experience navigating sexual assault when someone suggested she read Alice Sebold’s “Lucky,” the author’s 1999 memoir detailing her own sexual assault, identifying her rapist and the legal proceedings that followed. (In 2021, Anthony Broadwater, the man Sebold incorrectly identified, was exonerated.)

Like Sebold, Paterson had also been sexually assaulted in 1981 and had begun taking writing classes in 2015 to prepare herself for her own book. While reading “Lucky,” she came across a quote that helped her understand her own experience and visually express that experience in her contribution to “A Better World: Heroes Working for the Greater Good,” a quilt art exhibit on display at Visions Art Museum in Liberty Station through April 3.

Paterson, who started quilting in 1993, took some time to talk about her own experience, the refuge she found in Sebold’s writing, and the complex process of reckoning with both Broadwater’s wrongful conviction and the absence of justice in Sebold’s rapist never being found. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version of this conversation, please visit sandiegouniontribune.com/sdutlisa-deaderick-staff.html.)

Q: The “A Better World: Heroes Working for the Greater Good” exhibition at Visions Art Museum features more than 30 art quilts celebrating the heroes of each artist contributing to the exhibition. Can you talk about your piece “Hell and Hope,” and why you wanted to celebrate the author Alice Sebold?

A: I was a victim of rape back in 1981, which happened to be the same year that Alice Sebold was raped, and that’s what her book, “Lucky,” was about. I didn’t know anything about that until 2018, which was the first time I’d ever heard of her book. Someone had suggested I read it because they knew I was trying to write a book about my own experience, and I was having a difficult time writing it. When I read her book, she just put herself out there, and reading it made me understand more about myself and understand my fear of saying anything to anyone about what had happened because I didn’t know how to talk about it. She helped me understand how other people see things, which is in a million different ways, certainly, but that was enlightening to me. She helped me see my world through her world, and I think that was a very important reason right there.

Q: Are you comfortable talking about how Sebold sharing her experience as a survivor of sexual assault helped you in your own journey as a sexual assault survivor?

A: Just in understanding my own experience, her words and that quote about “hell and hope” was just so vivid in my mind. I’m a much more visual person, so I could just see that image immediately. It’s just part of something inside me that felt like this was the way that I could speak to the world. She didn’t know she was giving me that. I could have never dreamed that I would have read her quote and have it be so inspirational.

Q: What is it about her describing her own journey as “I live in a world where the two truths coexist; where both hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand” that resonated with you as a fellow survivor?

A: I would say, you kind of go on with life, but no one would know the uneasiness if the topic of rape were mentioned. That is part of the hell. Her words were words I never would’ve chosen, but it hit on the essence of what’s going on, that there’s just this anxiety. I couldn’t have ever written a quote the same way, but I could see in her experience that you have to hang on to hope if you aren’t fully healed. It was just such a positive way of presenting the kind of world that it is for survivors. Your world is imperfect, and you’re just hoping for the best.

Q: As we now know, the man accused of assaulting Sebold was exonerated in 2021. Sebold released a statement apologizing to him for what he suffered and for her inadvertent participation in perpetuating racial injustice in the criminal justice system at the time. In your own personal essay about this, you mention being appalled at the criticism she’s received. Can you talk about what you found heroic about her before the exoneration? And how you see her heroism since the exoneration?

A: The heroic part is the words based on the “A Better World” exhibit, and I might not have chosen that word [hero] to say about her, but what I truly admired about her is that she gave her full story. Even when I reread the part of the book where she identified him and the imperfect method she went through, that they used to prosecute.

I was so pleased that she came out with a statement [after Broadwater’s exoneration]. That is such a sucker punch to have him exonerated. I can only imagine how horrible it must be for her, emotionally, to know that she was part of the system that identified the wrong person. I’m sure she felt horrible about it, just judging from the way she wrote about it in her book. She didn’t write that she was 100 percent sure that it was him; she wrote about the imperfections within the system.

Q: Tell us about your quilt, “Hell and Hope.” Walk us through the elements of the piece, why you selected those materials and images.

A: I was reading the email invitation for the exhibit and immediately knew there would be flames. I knew there would be a hand, that there would be a knife, and I didn’t know what “hope” was going to look like. I just scribbled that on a piece of note paper and started creating hell. When I started working on the hand and the knife, as I was creating the hand, I knew I wanted the butterfly because they’re beautiful and calming. I don’t know if they’re the epitome of hope, but they’re just beautiful. I desperately needed that contrast. Then, a dove is just so peaceful and I separately created the dove.

With the background, I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I initially took fabric and painted a rainbow, and it did not turn out well, so I had to scrap that. When the rainbow flopped, I looked at the big flower as the background and that was it. In the flames of hell, I have the word “rape” there, which was made from the cloth wrapped around Valentine’s Day flowers. It’s sort of like velvet on thin fabric, and I cut the letters out and placed them there in a way that you can’t see very well. That word was the whole point.