Wow I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of this one piece. My quilt Langston Hughes: Pioneer Poet moves onto it’s 5th venue in October 2024.
It will be shown as part of the show Black Pioneers: Legacy in the American West at the Upcountry History Museum in Greenville, South Carolina October 26, 2024 – March 2, 2025.
Image credit: upcountryhistory.org
From the museum’s website:
“When thinking about the American Wild West, many imagine characters from a classic western movie. But the reality is, the West is – and was – a melting pot. This ground-breaking exhibit fills in the mostly missing historical record of Black people in 19th-century America.” – Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi
The Upcountry History Museum will invite visitors to experience a first-of-its kind exhibit when it hosts Black Pioneers: Legacy in the American West. The national touring exhibit, organized by The James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art, St. Petersburg, FL and Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi, artist, renowned historian and one of the foremost experts on African American quilting history and traditions, explores Black history in the American West.
The exhibit follows the path of Black history in the West through a timeline of original pictorial quilts. These colorful, richly detailed works of art chronicle the arrival of Africans in the American West in 1528, all the way through the Civil Rights Movement, bringing to life forgotten stories and lesser-known chapters in history. Dispelling the myth that Black people in the old West were mostly cowboys, Black Pioneers reveals the breadth of their occupations and achievements in society, religion, education, and the arts.
Quilts were chosen as the visual medium for the exhibit to highlight the intersections of African Americans in the Western Frontier while informing visitors about the art form and its important role in African American history. For African American women, quilts have always been at the core of artistic expression, taking form in the social, economic, and spiritual lives of the women who make them.
The 50 quilts, designed for the exhibit, were created by the Women of Color Quilters Network (WCQN) especially for the exhibition. Each quilt features a different Black pioneer, their life story researched and depicted in fabric by the quilt’s creator.
Founded by Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi in 1985, WCQN is a non-profit national organization whose mission is to educate, preserve, exhibit, promote and document quilts made by African Americans.
I have a lot of posts about this piece but you can check out my News page for more stories about the piece and the venues its been show.
Here’s a list of the 4 other museums the show has traveled/this quilt has shown:
- Stark Museum of Art, Orange, TX – March 2, 2024 – June 22, 2024.
- California Museum, Sacramento, CA – June 10, 2023 – October 1, 2023.
- The Booth Museum, Cartersville, GA – January 28, 2023 – May 21, 2023.
- The James Museum, St. Petersburg, FL – September 3, 2022 – January 8, 2023.
If you’d like to see the Artist Statement for this piece it is as follows:
52″ W x 52″ L cotton, cotton flannel, image transfer fabric
THE STORY OF THIS PIECE:
Decades before the political rhetoric of “Make America Great Again”, American poet, novelist, activist and playwright Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967) challenged us to “Let America Be America Again” in his poem named the same .
Langston Hughes was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s (Smithsonian.com) and his writings focused on the African American experience. He wrote the poem that inspired this quilt, Let America Be America Again, in 1935. It was first published by Esquire magazine in 1936 (classicesquire.com). Langston Hughes has a special significance to my family: he is the namesake of the first grandchild born into our family, Langston, named after his late grandmother Gina’s favorite poet.
This quilt shares the opening four lines of the poem’s first stanza which challenges “let America be the dream it used to be (for)…the pioneer”. These four lines are followed by a powerful statement in parenthesis: “(America was never America to me)”, summarizing the plight of African Americans historically not having access to the “American American . The entire poem is powerful and worth a full reading (poem resource: Poets.org).
Using a B&W public archive image from the Smithsonian taken by photographer Carl Van Vechten in 1939, I recreated in cotton fabrics and image transfer fabric, a section of the scene from that photo, creatively reimagining his shirt to contain words representing he was a writer. In the backdrop of the image of Langston Hughes is the American Flag merged with African fabric to represent his African American heritage. The quilt is also bound with African fabric. Across the top of his hat I placed the word from the poem “pioneer” as I see Langston Hughes as a “Pioneer Poet”. He was the “pioneer on the plain” of writing relevant to the African American experience.
“Let America Be America Again” was written in 1935, however it remains quite relevant in 2021.
Allegedly the piece will stop touring after this 5th show and then it can return back home. I always have a wall section picked out for it in my house.
tierneycreates 