Helene Gresser, Team Leader
Growing up, my mom was working long days as a salesperson, and she asked me to help her sort her multitudes of invoices by account numbers and put them into neat stacks on her bedroom office floor while she sat at her desk and tallied her sales totals for the week - each stack then had to be organized in ascending order by date of sale and put into an accordion file. It took quiet concentration and focus, and I loved that it meant that the sooner it was finished, the more time she had to relax and not be distracted with looming piles of paperwork. Even as a young child, I learned the extraordinary value of helping to create peace out of chaos.
Helene’s OBJECT STORY
I have a tote bag made from a patchwork dress my mother wore in the sixties. I had packed the dress and moved it from apartment to apartment since I moved to NYC thirty-something years ago, a touchstone momento to keep family with me no matter how far apart we all are. The dress was hand-sewn for my mom by her dear friend (now a world-renowned quilter) and a few years ago we had the dress (too small and delicate for me to ever wear) repurposed into a colorful shoulder tote that feels like home wherever I travel.