This one I have titled "Sisters." This piece reminds me of all of the great African women I have had the honor and pleasure to work with and become friends with who really are like sisters to me. This piece was part of a challenge that our FibR group worked on. We selected one of the African fabrics that I had brought back from West Africa and each of us took a piece of the fabric. The challenge was to work some of that fabric into the wall hanging.
My second piece is titled "Convergence." The inspiration for this piece came from one of my visits to a village in Niger West Africa. I watched the women place maize in the bottom of the large wooden mortar to be pounded before it was cooked for the evening meal. They stood in a circle around the mortar each with a large wooden stick to pound the maize. They efficiently and with great speed took turns hitting the maize. With the aid of song and rhythm they never once hit each other’s stick, but rather made a very labor intensive job look graceful and fun. I realized that, for these women, there was a convergence of work with dance and song. The background for this piece is a technique called convergence where four fabrics are pieced together. The two fabrics, which are also in the border, were ones I acquired when travelling in West Africa and typical of the women’s dresses from that part of the world. The red circles in the upper left symbolize the intense hot African sun.
No comments:
Post a Comment