Black Heritage:Quilting in the Family

Image:Presenting Grandma Malinda's Quilt at the Wade/Johnson Family Reunion. One of the things that I recall from Sunanda's African-American Artist History class is the tradition of quilting and furniture making in African-American culture. I also having being reading a book entitled African-American women artists, and quilting was a traditional format of creative expression for female slaves that has carried out to the current culture of African-American women. What I didn't know is that my great-grandmother Malinda Harper was a well-known quilter(And I wonder why I like to work with my hands). So I've posted a image my mom recently sent me of a quilt that my great-grandmother had done which was presented at our recent family reunion. I was totally blown away. I always knew that my family had a very artistic background, but it is interesting to know to what degree. I also discovered that she  used to make the communion bread at her local church(somehow this explains a lot for me too). So I believe going towards the next residency I would like to use the idea of quilting as a inspiration. Perhaps using the pattern formality of quilting to reference and speak about social issues within the African American culture. I still would like to address colorism because I feel like there was so much that I wanted to do this past semester but didn't because of time constraints so I feel I'm going to lay it all out this semester. I actually did take quite a few photographs this semester for a side piece that I was working on, and I will hopefully bring some of the images to the residency if I can. But for now things are going to get interesting. I have a crit with Sunanda tomorrow and I really don't know what to expect from him. We'll just have to see... I'll let you know what happens:)