About the Quilt 

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, especially when one doesn’t bother to go looking for evidence.

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This project is dedicated to all those that have suffered and died because of the COVID-19 inoculations. 

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This quilt, this monument made of fabric measures 15 feet x 25 feet. Its design consists of 260 squares, measuring 15” x 15” sew together to create a discolored and ghostly American flag. Each quilt square features case report information from cases identified in OPEN VAERS of persons who died after receiving a COVID-19 inoculation.

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VAERS is a publicly available pharmacovigilance database. For non-medical personnel like myself though, Open VAERS is easier to navigate than its parent website VAERS. I used the following search parameters when researching for this project:   

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- patient received at least one of the following COVID-19 inoculations: Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca 

- patient was between the ages of 1 – 55 at time of death

- patient was located in the United States of America including the District of Columbia

- patient died within 16 days or less from the time of product injection 

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With these parameters set in Open VAERS, I identified 487 cases of death within 16 days or less of injection with a COVID-19 product. These 487 cases are featured on the squares that create the quilt and include the VAERS ID number, age and sex of the patient, State in which the patient lived, number of days post injections when the patient died and the date of death. Of the 487 included cases, 234 (48.05%) of these individuals died within 3 days of their injection. In addition to these cases, various case narratives have also been included within the body of the quilt.    

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During the COVID Era, it became “dangerous” to do your own research. As an artist, this is akin to relating the dangers of using one's own brain and eyes. To become a novice, one merely needs start; to become an expert, one continues. And though I am far from an expert, I have pushed myself to look honestly at one of the many tangential atrocities of the COVID Pandemic like the adverse reactions associated with the COVID-19 vaccines including death and life-threatening injury.    

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VAERS is publicly available. You don’t need to present a badge or degree or even create an account to look at its secrets. Case reports include a host of categories like age, sex, state of residence, medical history, allergies, medications, etc.; nowhere on the form does it ask for party affiliation however…

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Many of the reports I read when researching for this project were submitted by those with knowledge of medical terminology and abbreviations, implying their status as personnel within the medical field including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, EMTs, etc.     1357369   1114806   1734141

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However, many of the reports included in this project are from non-medical reporters; there are the ones I find most haunting. These reports have been painstakingly created by parents, friends, siblings, children, and neighbors that need to leave a record of their loved one's suspiciously and alarmingly timed death. Some of these stories are horrendous, like the troop of boy scouts that watched their troop leader become short of breath, collapse and go into full arrest during a spring hike, three days after his vaccine. He died. Or the man that was found at the bottom of a fitness center pool, the day after receiving his 2nd COVID vaccine. He also died. This one sentence description merely reads, “My friend died from this vaccine.”

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I do not need to remain impartial because I am approaching this project not as a scientist but as a humanist. Sometimes I would play a game when I read these case descriptions. I would replace the word patient with “your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your grandmother, your uncle, your relative, your friend.” And I would see how many cases I could get through reading without feeling physically sick.

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Going through the database and reading these case descriptions helps illuminate one of the parts of the Pandemic not worthy of ignoring, whether you understand all the coding or not. Simply stated, these products injure, maim and kill people. And regardless of how rare (or not) these reactions may be, because these products are dangerous to even a portion of the population that receives them, they should no longer be administered until a thorough safety review has been completed. And because those who took these products did so without understanding the risks and benefits of this intervention due to lack of long-term safety data, those who have suffered immeasurable harm including life altering injury and death, should be compensated for their sacrifice.

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Dismissed due to your inexpertise as a scientist during this period in history, one faced great social pressure to “listen to the experts.” And should you dare to do your own research, you might be roundly mocked for your presumptuousness and hubris for dealing with materials far beyond your comprehension. And maybe there is a bit of truth to that because God knows how I’ve stumbled through teaching myself introductory concepts in medicine, statistics, ethics, law, and so on to do this project. And I’ll be the first to admit that while I am quite proud of myself for trying, I’m still a novice, a Sunday scientist at best; at worst an armchair, or rather a wooden stool philosopher as I am not really even deserving of an armchair. 

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But in this situation, when it comes down to it, you don’t need to have an expert level of understanding of how these products work on a cellular or immunological level to see that what has happened to those represented by this quilt or the living yet unseen injured like

Maddie de Garay

Brianne Dressen 

and Danielle Baker is wrong. These people, enduring new, worsened or worsening health issues and those grieving the loss of loved ones are being gaslit, censored and ostracized - made to endure a manufactured state of silent suffering. 

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Like most artists, my hope with this project is to give the viewer permission to look because problems do not get better when you ignore them.  The makers of these products are failing, our government is failing, and we are failing if we continue to ignore these victims.  By making this project, I invite the viewer to look at this monument to death. Looking leads to thinking and thinking leads to questioning and questioning to curiosity – and curiosity, well that’s one of the most dangerous forces in the universe,. Or at least it seemed to be during the COVID Era.  

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This quilt gives you license to look and to judge. To determine if our ostrich strategy of sticking our heads in the sand (or up our asses) is one that does right by our suffering compatriots.

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And this quilt gives you license to exercise your conscience, because there is no State licensing board to practice it.   

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I am sorry to say that this thing I am asking you to see is ugly and horrible. To me, it has been almost maddening, and I truly cannot wait to exorcise it from me. I cannot wait to look away… And yet I sheepishly acknowledge that doing so is a privilege because I have not been robbed of something very precious by my own government and country and people.

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To those to have been personally impacted by these poisons, I believe you. And you are not alone. 

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To those curious enough to look, I will never call you crazy. You are not a conspiracy theorist for questioning. Curiosity is not a vice.

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Do you know the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes? It goes something like this.

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There once was a narcissistic emperor who ruled his kingdom with ferocity and great callousness. One day a couple of rogues arrived in his realm with a plot to expose the emperor’s wicked ways. Seeking audience with the King, the rogues introduced themselves as tailors and weavers of magic garments. The clothes they promised to make would be fabulous, crafted with the finest silks, pearls, diamonds, even gold. But the rogues warned, “because these garments will be so elite, those fools not worthy of their offices will not be able to see them.” At that, the vain emperor needed the tailors magic suit and he set aside a chamber in his castle for the two and provided them with the finest materials and looms to weave.   

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One night, unable to sleep the emperor sent his emissary to see how the work was getting on. When the minister peered into the chamber where the two rogues were working, he saw the two hard at work but with nothing in hand. Panic stricken, the emissary questioned himself, “Am I a fool, unfit for my office? Shaken by this notion, the emissary returned to his liege with a boastful report of the beauty of the ruler’s new clothes.  

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Before long, the rogues finished their work and assembled the emperor’s whole court for a presentation of the garments. The whole of the emperor’s court, ambassadors, minsters, and lords of the land were all in assembly for the royal fitting. And though the rogues presented the garments with great flourish, to the court’s great horror, the robes were invisible to all, even the emperor. Despite this, members of the court proclaimed with the greatest sincerity, “How beautiful they are  m’ lord! See how finely cut is the cloth, how gorgeous the colors, how skillful the stitching!” They all began to speak at once, fawning over the invisible vestments so the emperor began to undress and boasted by his court’s fervor, the emperor departed with his guard and courtiers to exhibit his fabulous new threads to his subjects.   

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Striding the streets of his empire, two pages carried his invisible train and all the people shouted “praise and glory to our emperor and his new clothes” for they also had heard of the clothes strange magic and were afraid to admit that they could see nothing. Suddenly a little girl in the crowd called out, “But Mother, the emperor is quite naked!” And at that, everyone burst into uproarious laugher, and the emperor ran all the way home to his palace and hid under his bed in shame. 

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We all need be like the little girl and exclaim loudly what has, until very recently, only been private knowledge. The emperor is naked! An atrocity has happened, and we need reconcile it.