TAYLOR SALEEM CASTS delicate dogwood blossoms in silver. She saws away at thin sheets of metal, conjuring the forms of birds and botanicals. She strings beads and sets turquoise. Each piece she makes reveals an aspect of her story.
Saleem, who is from Alton, is the owner of Taylor Saleem Jewelry. She grew up in a bi-racial family with a Black father and a white mother. “I [used to] code-switch—I could fit in with this group or that group,” she says of her childhood. “I didn’t recognize that there was anything unique about me and my racial background until college.”
But as a student at Saint Louis University in the early aughts, where she didn’t see many people who looked like her, Saleem experienced an identity crisis: “I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere in the world.”
This story is from the September/October 2020 edition of DesignSTL.
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This story is from the September/October 2020 edition of DesignSTL.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Cut from the Same Cloth
“Turkey Tracks” is a 19th-century quiltmaking pattern that has the appearance of little wandering feet. Patterns like the tracks, and their traditions and myths, have been passed down through the generations, from their frontier beginnings to today, where a generation of makers has embraced the material as a means of creating something new. Olivia Jondle is one such designer. Here, she’s taken an early turkey track-pattern quilt, cut it into various shapes, and stitched the pieces together, adding calico and other fabric remnants as needed. The result is a trench coat she calls the Pale Calico Coat. Her designs are for sale at The Rusty Bolt, Jondle’s small-batch fashion company based in St. Louis. —SAMANTHA STEVENSON
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