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This is my story for Session 2 (migration). There’s a kind of home structure at the base of the piece, then what I think of as a fluttering, flying figure above. It’s moving to the right side where there is a row of regular checkered blocks.
I can assign my own meanings to these elements. Having grown up in Ft. Smith, Arkansas in the 1950’s and 60’s when segregation was very overt and accepted (by those I knew) as the normal “way things are ''. My parents, who were from the “North'', did not agree with this on a cerebral level, but also did not raise a voice in support of the Civil Rights movement of the day. We left Arkansas in 1969, at the height of national unrest, and moved to Indiana, where I saw essentially the same racist attitudes, just not the same overt, out-front, official condoning of them (but we know now that these submerged attitudes were equally effective at preserving a similar segregation). All of which necessarily colored my emotional (underneath cognition) worldview - we are all, at some level, products of our environment. The symbolism of the flying form - bird (Phoenix?) - my proudest achievement... escaping this structure & parenting a daughter who is demonstrably free from that baggage.
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About Liberty Worth & "Where We Have Been & Where We Hope To Be"
Liberty Worth is a native of Los Angeles- a city of grit, diversity and great natural beauty. Influenced by the power of art and nature to soothe trauma and bring peace, she creates works that reflect natural wonder and quiet beauty from both new and discarded or repurposed materials. Where We Have Been and Where We Hope to Be is her current series of quilts created as a meditation on grief, hopes, and history in response to the murder of George Floyd and protests in 2020. She constructs these quilts using scraps of African fabrics in simple blocks.
She extended this practice and created a series of videos and materials from her own work and some of the materials from the Inbreak Residency - and pitched it to a small diverse group of friends and colleagues. The participants created works of their own. Each went through the steps of learning the materials (Session 1), mapping their heritage (Session 2), honoring their grief (Session 3) and investigating hope (Session 4). Digital artists turned the project digital, writers wrote profound statements and visual artists pushed boundaries. This is their work. Liberty’s quilts, their paper & digital quilts - some of which she has created back into quilts. Each artist has written a statement about their work.
