L'Merchie Frazier, From a Birmingham Jail: MLK, 1996, silk, photo transfer, gel medium, dyes, and beads, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of L'Merchie Frazier in memory of Watty and Alberta Frazier and James and Merchie Dooley (grandparents), 2002.41
Sometimes artworks reveal themselves upon closer examination, and if we are lucky, the artist will share their secrets. I had a chance to spend time with L'Merchie Frazier's From a Birmingham Jail: MLK, and my close looking prompted many questions and made me realize that there is much to explore in the complex quilt.
In From a Birmingham Jail, Ms. Frazier chronicles episodes in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. using the format of a traditional African strip quilt. I was particularly intrigued by the bottom left-corner pocket, which holds three separate fabric squares with images on them. I wondered about the purpose behind this pocket and these interchangeable squares. Why did Ms. Frazier choose to have a pocket in this quilt? What was the significance of the images on the squares?
At an open house for the exhibition Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women at SAAM's Renwick Gallery, I was mesmerized by the artist as she talked about this work. I hoped I’d be able to ask her about these squares and this pocket, and she did not disappoint!
Photo by Katie Hondorf
According to Ms. Frazier, the purpose of this interactive quilt was to focus on the possibility of creating discourse to talk about different perspectives and create a thread to fellow humans. In her words, the mission of her work is to "Save Me From my Amnesia as I Remember, Reclaim, Restore, and Reimagine." The artist's call to action in From a Birmingham Jail: MLK is creativity. In it, Ms. Frazier references one of Dr. King's most famous writings, drawing inspiration from his statement that “...the World is in need of creative extremists.”
She explained that by highlighting Dr. King, she was showing him as an icon for the civil rights movement, with support from fellow Americans like Reverend Howard Thurman, Rosa Parks, and Claudette Colvin. He was an icon for a movement for racial equality that has spanned more than four centuries through to the recent Black Lives Matter protests.
She also explained the bottom-left corner pocket and the three squares: the images come from the memorial issue of Jet magazine, one of the few publications that consistently covered prominent African Americans and their lives. The featured squares contain images of King’s Nobel Prize and his assassination, and she intended them to be pulled out and read. This interactive element is meant to be an invitation for others to add their stories and provide a starting place to discuss what this quilt means.
Ms. Frazier also reflected on her parents’ work and legacy; inspired by her maternal grandfather, who owned a tailoring shop and did embroidery, and her mother, who quilted and crocheted. She spoke about how they encouraged her to travel the world, to look at threads that bind humanity. She was able to travel to Brazil where she saw firsthand lace made by individuals for the Catholic Church and the African diasporic religion Candomblé. The lace on the blue strip of the quilt references her research from this trip.
I hope other visitors will be moved by Ms. Frazier's inspiring work that threads together our collective humanity.
