People equate quilts with hearth and home.

Comfort, safety, and security.

I'm a curator and an artist, but I'm also a collector of quilts.

I taught myself how to quilt.

I have never had lessons, but it just became a passion.

I make narrative quilts.

Either they're about my family or African-American history, or the status of women.

To be able to use quilts to tell a story, I feel I'm just fortunate to do that.

I draw out the images first and a textile company prints it on fabric.

Then it's sandwiched with cotton and a backing, and it's then quilted.

This quilt is called Strange Fruit, inspired by Billie Holiday singing the song Strange Fruit.

And it is about the history of lynching in this country.

It's very important for me now to make quilts about these untold stories that are very difficult for people to hear, see, and deal with.

This is the best part of quilting, when you're doing the last, last little step, putting the sleeve on.

38 years ago, I founded the Women of Color Quilters Network.

Currently, we have about 500 members.

I ask them to create quilts surrounding a certain theme, some facet of African-American history, and then I curate exhibitions of their works.

And Still We Rise was a show about events and people that impacted Black America from 1619 to present day.

There's a quilt by Carolyn Crump that depicts slaves on the ship and she has one that has jumped overboard.

There were quilts celebrating sports figures, quilts about historic Black women and the era of civil rights.

That exhibition traveled for six years, to museums all around the world.

That says a lot for the power of quilts.

This is one of the largest quilts that I have in my own collection, and it was made by Sharon Kerry-Harlan, and it's called On the Face of it All.

This is dozens and dozens of these squared patches here and each one has a different face and symbols.

And what the artist was trying to depict is the complexity of individual lives.

Dr. Mazloomi.

Oh, how you doing?

Good to see you.

Yeah, you have to tell me about these new quilts.

I love Cynthia Lockhart's quilts.

She uses fabric.

She uses found objects.

This is, this is a lot of things going on that kind of looks like it's chaos but it's not.

It's dreamy.

It's got that mood of the whirlwind and being in the stratosphere.

Okay.

I love it.

Is it for sale?

Of course.

I keep telling Rezvan I'm not buying any more stuff, but I just can't help it.

Right.

Dr. Mazloomi has been incredibly important in my life.

She took me in under the Women of Color's Quilter Network.

She invites you to these shows, but she's very demanding, and you have to do good work.

But it was just a phenomenal learning process.

I learned I wanted to approach quilting by telling stories, by being impactful.

Cynthia Lockhart's Levi Coffin quilt was a part of And Still We Rise, and then I purchased it.

Levi Coffin was a white pastor who was risking his life to help slaves journey to freedom.

These circles represent the underground railroad station.

And this would be Levi Coffin's home.

It was a pivotal point.

Right, that was the meeting place.

I'm an artist, and I enjoy being an artist, but a lot of times I wasn't selling.

But being in her shows helped my work to be accepted by collectors.

My day job is in advertising.

Want a snack?

Yeah, yeah.

When we built this home I wanted lots of space for my art collection and my wife wanted windows.

And our architect did a really good job of combining both elements.

No matter where we go throughout the house you will see art.

In the bathrooms, in the closets, down in our workout room.

And even I got some art in the wine cellar, so I'm kind of a crazy collector like that.

I have felt in my collecting that women are marginalized.

Their art doesn't always garner the support that male artists do.

Promoting women artists is kind of what I call my jam, and so my gallery in our home is only women artists.

This crocheted AK-47 is by a local artist named Jen Edwards.

It's just very soft and very pretty, but yet very violent as well.

I collect things that focus in on issues of today.

A lot of the collection is political.

A lot of the work is emotional.

This piece is by Ashley Carroll, and she likes to bring homage to Black women's hair.

I actually acquired this piece while Ashley was still in grad school at Miami University.

It's just so exciting for me when I collect work by young emerging artists, and to see them blossom it warms my heart.

This beautiful quilt is Cynthia's.

I like that she's telling us to do what we need to do.

Exercise our voice, our rights, beautiful craft, and yet talking about voting.

Every quilt has a story.

Every quilt... Has a story.

This is your work.

Meeting these artists just adds to the collection and adds to my whole realm because I love, I love artists.

I'm like an artist groupie.

This is one of my favorite quilts and it's called A Lady Sings the Blues.

Many years ago, Cynthia suggested that I be in an exhibition in Cincinnati.

I put it in, hoping that no one would purchase it.

I even raised the price to make sure no one would touch this quilt.

I went on a trip somewhere, came back and called the gallery manager, then she told me, well, the quilt was sold before the show opened.

I said, what?

I want it back.

I want it back.

So, she says, I don't think you want it back because the person that got it is a well-known collector.

Carolyn and I became really close and it was through Carolyn that I met Cynthia.

So, it's just, it's this, I don't know, this sisterhood of friendship.

I can almost feel, I can hear her singing this song.

We're all under the banner of needle and thread in the spirit of the cloth.

We both collect kind of similar in some ways, Carolyn, and we, we go after things...

I have a responsibility as a collector to the artist because I know I can't keep it forever.

I have a surprise for you.

It's going to a special museum, so... Really?

Oh, my god.

That's a huge significance for me, it's going to be shown, and people will see it, and it will exist so much longer than I will exist.

That's just amazing.

I'll let you know soon.

Okay, okay.

Which one?

I'm excited.

I'm excited.

We need our collectors.

We need our curators.

We also need our artists to tell the story of what's next.

What is the next?