DOXOLOGY

for Ella May Wiggins

In Doxology for Ella May Wiggins, essayistic thoughts on Appalachian landscape and labor and dizzying images of a foremother’s handmade quilts interanimate one another, all while the buzz of various textile machinery ceaselessly churns underneath. Drawing together work by cultural theorists Denis Cosgrove, Raymond Williams, and bell hooks, the film acknowledges the attenuating force of acts of landscaping upon a place’s lived-in collectivity, labor, creativity, and resistant power. Titled for the Appalachian union organizer, songwriter, and mother Ella May Wiggins, Doxology is an anarchic eschewal of the touristic gaze, keeping time instead to the suffocating, urgent rhythms of being inside. 
The film was created in Hayesville, North Carolina, where the quilts depicted within were originally stitched. Only cast-off materials and supplies—including cameras, film stock, and regional photographic and textile ephemera—were used in its creation.

(currently in festivals)

installed at West Virginia University’s Canady Creative Arts Center

(as part of the 2026 West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival)

Super 8/Digital