Since the beginning of time, women have swept up, beautified, patched up, clothed, fed and nurtured homes, caves, temples and those within them. This toiling away has been largely invisible, expected and taken for granted in our modern, patrilineal societies. A popular proverb so accurately says “Man may work from sun to sun, but woman’s work is never done.” Women’s work conjures up a derogatory term of demeaning, menial, and expected labor overlapping global, cultural gender roles. llliterate rural women, perceived as primitive, stitched codes on sleeves and chests of traditional garments and established a visual language; the makers’ wishes and dreams preserved a legacy. There was initiative in being the best symbol maker in the land. Whether creating ceramic vessels for serving food or clothing to protect or parade in or logo designs, women persist as keepers of the flame in echoing the archaic feminine in the continuance of ideas through symbols and ornament. All too often these tireless multitaskers struggle for time to realize forgotten dreams. “Women piece together their lives from the scraps left over for them,” says Terry Tempest Williams in When Women Were Birds. Things evolve and things remain as modern working women persist in being complex birds in flight seesawing between career and domestic worlds.

I had gone on an excavation to seek the mythical heroine in my MFA thesis work. I discovered her alive and well in this body of women’s work. The Romanian folk garment’s symbols echo Neolithic beginnings as protective signs that chant of preservation, fortitude and survival. Over millennia, the ravages of conquests, plagues, wars, and endless violence, a tireless endurance pressed onwards within prolific, matriarchal traditions. They perservered to create artistry where none existed, despite the torrents of invisibility based on gender biases or lack of opportunity. Forging ahead and continuing to this day to create a momentous canon of design that unveils the power of the feminine and an unwavering, anthem of ethnic, international pride.