Trails, Tracks, Tarmac

As I was reviewing some of the statistics for this blog, I noticed that a popular search term entered is "Trails, Tracks, Tarmac." I was a bit curious about this as it is an exhibition Dr. Gaither's works are an integral part of and it was only after scrolling through the blog that I discovered that while I have mentioned the exhibit, I have never really said anything about it. Talk about assuming your audience knows your subject as well as you do! Not a good habit for a museum educator! Let me correct this oversight now.

Trails, Tracks, Tarmac: Lives of African Americans in the History and Culture of Northern Anne Arundel County, 1850 to the Present is an exhibition created by the Northern Arundel Cultural Preservation Society, Inc. in partnership with the Banneker-Douglass Museum. The exhibition covers...well, see the title of the exhibit and I think you will be able to guess. The exhibition opened at BDM in November 2006 and ran through December 2007. Trails, Tracks, Tarmac grew from a grassroots effort to preserve the history and culture of African American towns in Northern Anne Arundel County, Maryland to a rallying call for community involvement in the creation of an exhibition and related programming and later a traveling exhibition.

The exhibition tells the story of Northern Anne Arundel County communities and individuals in two ways - through objects and through documentary story quilts. Using objects such as farm implements, early school house furnishings, manumission papers, pickers checks, and railroad items, visitors are able to learn through viewing objects coming from the homes, schools, businesses, and churches of the communities involved in the exhibition. The second part tells the stories of African Americans in Northern Anne Arundel County through several small (3 ft by 3 ft) quilts and multiple quilts by Dr. Gaither including The Community Quilt. While it was on display at BDM, Dr. Gaither also exhibited her family quilt and her spiritual community quilt.

Trails, Tracks, Tarmac has been traveling around Maryland, opening at three different locations last year. The exhibition is now on display at the Wiley H. Bates Legacy Center in Annapolis, MD until September 2009.

American Series Border, Part II

When I posted the video and description on the J2WH Quilt border and mentioned how it was a part of Dr. Gaither's American Series, I started to think that it might be helpful to show some images of the other quilts in the series and their borders. While each of the quilt borders follow the same templates, they all have their own distinct look and feel which best suits their individual quilt. The two quilts I am featuring in this blog are "The Community Quilt" which documents communities in Northern Anne Arundel County and "The Airport Quilt" documenting the communities surrounding and once existing on the land the airport now occupies.




The Lives of African Americans from 1850-Present at Friendship BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport
aka "The Airport Quilt"

Trails, Tracks, Tarmac: The History and Culture of African Americans in Northern Anne Arundel County, 1850-Present

aka "The Community Quilt"

The images above show both of the quilts "in process." As you can see with the image of The Community Quilt, there were many hands working on the quilt to help complete it, thereby truly making it a community quilt. Each of the quilts have the same characteristics of the J2WH border including the African fabric, safety pins, blue fabric for the Middle Passage, red fabric for the blood shed, rolled up American flag fabric, and the railroad fabric.

Both of these quilts are on display at the Wiley Bates Legacy Center in Annapolis as part of the exhibition Trails, Tracks, Tarmac: The History and Culture of African Americans in Northern Anne Arundel County from 1850-Present. The remaining quilts in the American Series are not currently on display, but I will work with Dr. Gaither to get information on those quilts on the blog soon. Efforts are beginning now to bring all of the American Series quilts together for an exhibition in the coming year. We will keep you posted on the progress of this project.

J2WH Quilt Explained - The American Series Border

One of the questions I am most frequently asked when I give tours of the Journey to the White House Quilt (or J2WH for shorthand - see the title of this post) is about the many symbols included in the quilt. I could go through and give the details, but I think Dr. Gaither does a much better job than I ever could for obvious reasons.

"The purple fabric around the edge signifies spirituality and protection. The green is the color for life, a life-giving color. And those tassels on the end that are covered up are all green as well – for life. And then as you come in all of these fabrics are from Africa and they represent the motherland.

Then as you go around it, there’s a whole line of safety pins that signify the pain of being pulled from the motherland in slavery so that’s what these pins are for. Then just beyond that is the blue fabric which is the Middle Passage representing the water. The red and the black represent the lives that were lost in the Middle Passage.

And this purple, this big rope right here that is covered with the Stars and Stripes, I borrowed that idea from Faith Ringgold, who is a quilter and she usually puts this on the outside edge to anchor the quilt to give them some body. But this, it signifies being brought into the U.S. and being trapped in this space.

Just beyond that is the railroad fabric which has become sort of my signature piece of fabric and that here recognizes and honors the Underground Railroad. And on it, in this case for Barack Obama, every other box here represents, with the green around it, life – life experiences or highlights in his life starting from when he was born over there, coming all the way around. And then the other squares are pieces of legislation that are tied to his name while he was in the Senate. So when people say 'What did he do,' well he did a lot. So all of these things are here."

The video clip above is Dr. Gaither talking about the border of the quilt which is a component of all of the quilts in her American Series. It was taken during the quilting session on 11 January 2009 at the Bates Legacy Center in Annapolis while people were adding their own stitches to the quilt. The image below is a close up of someone adding a few finishing touches to the quilt border before it was displayed on the wall at the Banneker-Douglass Museum. The image quality below will allow you to see some of the fine details of the border.

Note to viewers: The video quality isn't very high and the volume level is fairly low. Enjoy!

Challenging Expectations

During the 11 January quilting workshop at the Bates Legacy Center Paul Gillespie, a photographer from the Capital Newspaper, came out to shoot a few images for inclusion in a then-upcoming article. When he arrived at the event he was prepared for a run of the mill assignment but found something so much more. Click on the link below to read his reactions and what happened as a result of his participation in the Journey to the White House Quilting session.

http://photo-monkeys.blogspot.com/2009/02/obama-quilt.html