Author: Anthony Le

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Alice Walker “In search of Our Mother’s Gardens” and the Quilts

Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens” and the Quilts created by the likes of Faith Ringgold and Bisa Butler all share a common message and theme. Their work resembles strength and pride for African American Women using artwork and symbolism to tell a story using pictures. When I looked at the Quilts and watched the videos, I noticed that the colors were extremely bright and vibrant. It popped out and caught my attention quickly. I like this about the artwork because not only is it extremely noticeable, but it also helps express the personality of the person as well as the type of style they like to make their quilts. In Walker’s text, she expresses how poetry is also a good way to get your point across because you can use metaphors and similes to express how you feel.

I also noticed reading the text that Walker’s mother was a huge influence in shaping her into the strong woman she is today. The quote “During the “working” day, she labored beside-not behind-my father in the fields. Her day began before sunup and did not end until late at night. There was never a moment for her to sit down, undisturbed, to unravel her own private thoughts; never a time free from interruption by work or the noisy inquiries of her many children.” Page 6. This quote is significant to me because seeing her mother not only work to make money but also work in the house to cook and clean shows that she grew up with a hard-working and loving mother who she could look up to for guidance and support. Walker states that while she was growing up and exploring the country, she was saddened to see that the African American women in the country were so beautiful yet so underappreciated by society. I think that was the inspiration to start using poetry and artistic methods such as paintings and quilts to inspire any African American woman who sees it to realize that they are strong, beautiful, and independent. Something else I’ve noticed reading the text and watching the videos is that colors are very important in showing how vibrant or bright something or someone is.

I mentioned before that the quilts and paintings had a lot of bright colors but it’s interesting to see how Alice Walker incorporated her mother’s garden into the text as well to show how they inspired her. It states “And I remember people coming to my mother’s yard to be given cuttings from her flowers; I hear again the praise showered on her because whatever rocky soil she landed on, she turned into a garden. A garden so brilliant with colors, so original in its design, so magnificent with life and creativity that people drive by our house in perfect strangers and imperfect strangers and ask to stand or walk among my mother’s art.” Page 8. Her growing up with all these beautiful flowers and a wonderful mother must have been the inspiration for her to start using art as a way to express stories about people.

The artwork I see from the quilts matches the description of her mother’s garden. Faith Ringgold’s “Woman on a Bridge” was a symbolic piece of work that was meant to show people that you should go and strive above and beyond. The girl is above the bridge floating and I think it is meant to show that oppression and unfair laws make it hard for African American women to succeed but you can use outlets like making quilts to tell your story. The “Street Story Quilt” was also constructed by Faith Ringgold, and I think it does a very nice job of depicting what it was like to live in the area in 1985. I noticed in Faith Ringgold’s work that the colors aren’t dark, but the setting of her work is during the nighttime so they aren’t as vibrant as in Bisa Butler’s work. Bisa Butler’s quilts to me are a lot more eye-catching and have more of a wow factor to them. This is because she uses way brighter colors to make her work and I think this is because she wants to show off the person, she is quilting to make them feel seen or heard.

Questions

How does Alice Walker use art and poetry to help express how she feels to other people? Why do you think her mother’s garden was such a big influence in her being able to express herself?

How can we use art and color to see what type of mood or setting the person is trying to instill for the viewer. Does the color or background help create a story if there are no words on the canvas?

Work Cited

“WALKER_IN Search of.Pdf.” Google Drive, Google, drive.google.com/file/d/1ZZDHvHq-56H2zAbL4b7qsRoXPXRnEnWW/view. Accessed 15 Apr. 2024.

American, Faith Ringgold. “Faith Ringgold: Street Story Quilt.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1 Jan. 1985, www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/485416.

“Faith Ringgold.” The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation, www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/faith-ringgold. Accessed 15 Apr. 2024.

“Bisa Butler: Portraits: Exhibition Stories.” The Art Institute of Chicago, www.artic.edu/videos/44/bisa-butler-portraits-exhibition-stories. Accessed 15 Apr. 2024.

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Event Review on the Alternative versions of Sherlock Holmes.

Today, February 29th, 2023 at 6 PM in Old Main on the Second floor in the Colloquium Room, SUNY Cortland Provost Ann McClellan provided the audience a presentation of facts and ideas calling the idea that Sherlock Holmes throughout history is almost always portrayed as a straight white male and that’s who we picture in our minds when someone says the name out loud. However, she challenged that agenda with evidence in film and records saved and published back in the 1910s and 1920s showing movies that portrayed and cast African Americans instead of the typical Caucasian white male. I found this part extremely interesting because I never knew there was ever a movie or a book where Sherlock Holmes was portrayed as an African American. Provost Ann McClellan explained that the reason we had just seen Sherlock Holmes depicted as an African American just now and not earlier in our lives was due to systematic racism. In the 1900s, especially the earlier parts, Hollywood and movie producers tried their absolute best to stay away from casting African Americans into roles as a way to avoid controversy with the public. It was seen as better to suppress African Americans from equal opportunity in the film industry than it was to take backlash casting them. Since film producers didn’t want to cast African Americans to play roles in movies or films, they decided to have white characters use dark makeup and burnt cork on their faces to make themselves look African American. This was extremely offensive because the white people who used black faces would use it as a method to mock and make African Americans look unintelligent and uncivilized.

Despite backlash and hatred from those with racism, the post-Reconstruction Era led to an increase in race films trying to show the everyday lives of an African American family living a normal life just as a white family would instead of the rude stereotypes that white people using black faces tried depicting them as. Phillip Brogdon was a big Sherlock Holmes fan. He was the first ever African American to be selected to be a part of the mostly white Sherlock Holmes society also known as the Baker Street Irregulars. He wrote a short text titled “ Sherlock in Black” challenging the idea that race and color define the human and not the character despite novels of African American versions of Sherlock Holmes books having them wear the same outfit as the white Sherlock Holmes. The first ever Sherlock Holmes that had an African American playing the lead role was in 1903. It helped connect with the Harlem Renaissance because of the music and the sense of unification through dancing and singing and not color. Later on, filmmakers tried to use a method called color-blind casting which meant that people who would be in the movies would not be able to be picked based on race or color and they would be completely random. This was seen as a way to balance or make everyone have more of an equal opportunity.

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