Artwork Details
- Title
- Too Much Sugar for a Dime
- Artist
- Date
- 2017
- Location
- Dimensions
- 54 x 42 in.
- Copyright
- © 2024, Beverly Y. Smith
- Credit Line
- Gift of Fleur S. Bresler
- Mediums Description
- cotton canvas, cotton batt, embroidery thread, found objects, pencil, acrylic paint, antique lace, and recycled quilt top
- Classifications
- Subjects
- African American
- Figure female — child — full length
- Object Number
- 2023.40.4
Artwork Description
Beverly Y. Smith
born 1957, Charlotte, NC
resides Charlotte, NC
Too Much Sugar for a Dime
2017
cotton canvas, cotton batting, embroidery thread, found objects, pencil, acrylic paint, antique lace, and recycled quilt top
Drawn in graphite is a child version of artist Beverly Smith holding a small pouch made from a recycled Dixie Crystals sugar bag. The rem-stitched circles framing the bottom of her skirt? ? are reminiscent of candy drops, sweet treats from the past. The background is an interpretation of the popular board game Candy Land, in which players race through a colorful, winding track to reach their destination.
While there is a veneer of innocence, details such as the girl’s dress of “Welsh cotton,” a cheap and uncomfortable material worn by many enslaved people, the Brown Mule chocolate bar at right symbolizing the forty acres and a mule promised to formerly enslaved families after the Civil War, and the racialized caricatures welcoming viewers to “Dixie Land” at the girl’s left represent some of the harsh realities of Black childhood in the Jim Crow South.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Fleur S. Bresler, 2023.40.4
We Gather at the Edge: Contemporary Quilts of Black Women Artists, 2025