Penumbra

The Story of a Quilt...
by Sarah Bellamy

Front of Gem of the Ocean Quilt

One of the enduring links between the Old World of Africa and the New World in the Americas is visible through textiles. Rhythmic patterns specific to various regions in Africa have shown up from Brazil to Birmingham by way of quilts, cloths, embroidery, weaving and eventually also surfaced in painting and jazz music. Because it was illegal for slaves to read or write, quilting became a way of preserving history and personal stories. Historians are still researching the way in which quilts may have been used to contain maps and messages that would direct travelers to freedom and mark safe houses along the Underground Railroad.

The quilt in Gem of the Ocean is quite literally a map. Like many maps that hide secrets, only the trained eye can decipher its meaning. Aunt Ester, the keeper of ancestral wisdom, knows the powerful secrets of this quilt. She explains that it shows the way to the City of Bones, a spiritual place under the ocean made entirely of human bones. The city was raised in remembrance of those Africans who died en route to the New World.

The transatlantic slave trade was one of the largest migratory projects the world has ever seen. Between the 15th and 19th centuries an estimated 9 to 28 million African people were forcibly relocated. It is estimated that 8 million people were killed in the Middle Passage. Sailors' logs recount schools of sharks that would follow the slave ships feeding on discarded corpses or, if a ship had illegally overloaded its human cargo (as was often the case), live captives who were thrown overboard as patrolling ships approached.

Center of Gem of the Ocean Quilt: "The City of Bones"

The quilt in Gem of the Ocean represents this journey. In the center the color fades from the quilt. Stitched into the cloth are innumerable bones, representing the city of which Aunt Ester speaks. Cradling this city is a large Sankofa bird, a West African symbol that embodies the belief that a step forward begins with a glance back. The Sankofa bird is a keeper of memory and legacy. As the elders say, before moving forward, you must settle with the past. The City of Bones is a place of reckoning and resurrection.

The more one examines this quilt, the more complicated the story becomes. The artist Cecile Margaret Lewis used a piecing technique that would have been common in slave cabins where women saved every scrap of cloth until a quilt could be sewn. The block pattern she selected is aptly named "Storm at Sea" and is authentic to the period. As one gazes upon the quilt, myriad people begin to appear, surrounding the City of Bones with the living and the dead.

The contribution of African American slave women to textile production and patterning is a history that is written largely through the pieces they sewed. The majority of quilts that survived were meant for use in the plantation house by the slave-owning family, but slave women also sewed quilts for themselves. In the precious few hours intended for rest and recuperation after a day's work, women gathered scrap pieces of cloth and sewed. Largely utilitarian, these quilts were put to rigorous use and many did not survive. A quilt like Aunt Ester's signals a generational passing down of knowledge and womanhood as a rite of passage for young slave girls.

After working in the fields or plantation homes, after parenting their own children and the children of the mistress of the house, after tending to the needs of their very basic households including cleaning, cooking, mending, butchering, shucking, nursing, midwifery and loving, these spectacular women found time to create nothing short of patterned miracles that transcribe the history of a people. With this quilt we honor their courage, tenacity and ability to keep their hearts open enough to care for others when the world would not take care of them.

Take a closer look! Join us in the Dowling Studio on Sunday, May 4 at 4 p.m. for a gallery presentation of Penumbra's Gem of the Ocean quilt. Meet the artist and learn more about the rich tradition of African American quilting. For more information visit Penumbra's Web site at www.penumbratheatre.org.

CECILE MARGARET LEWIS (Quilt Artist) was born in Chicago, and raised in Chicago, Nashville, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Belle Prairie, Minn., and Los Angeles. She returned to Minneapolis in 1994 and has lived here ever since. Her artistic work includes three media: photography, gardening and textiles. She has helped to curate exhibits for the Textile Center and is also a lead artist for Penumbra Theatre's Quilting Circle Series. As a teacher, Cecile believes that her language is universal, timeless and understood by all. She writes, "I speak with stitches."

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