The 2009 Penumbra Quilting Circle
Presented by Target

Penumbra Quilting Circle Program Description

Penumbra has made a commitment to sharing the unique history and significance of African American quilting through our educational programs. Hand-painted quilt patterns adorn our lobby, offices, and the theatre itself, providing a unique atmosphere which tells the story of our people. Through representations of traditional African American quilt blocks, culturally-specific symbols and historical images we honor our past and preserve our cultural legacy. You can see the quilt wall and learn more here.

In 2007 the annual Penumbra Quilting Circle began in partnership with the Textile Center of Minnesota. Participants of all skill levels meet twice per week for seven weeks to explore the importance of quilting in African American culture while learning technical skills from master quilters and lead artists. The group works together to create a quilt that is featured in our annual holiday show, Black Nativity. The program culminates with the participants attending the show on opening night to see their quilt unveiled onstage during the performance.

The 3rd Annual Penumbra Quilting Circle is presented by Target with additional support from Minnesota Quilters, Inc.

The 2009 Quilting Circle will be led by quilting artists Cecile Margaret Lewis and Gail Hanson.

Cecile Margaret Lewis
Cecile was born in Chicago, IL and raised in Chicago, Nashville, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Belle Prairie and Los Angeles. She returned to Minneapolis in 1994 and has lived here ever since. She describes herself as a child of the African Diaspora, a person of color, a product of the American slave trade - a "New World" person whose feet straddle centuries and continents. Her artistic work includes three media: Photography, Gardening and Textiles. "Photography is my first passion which began when I was fifteen. Gardening, my largest canvas and most fleeting work commenced at age twenty. Textiles are the third medium I explore. My sister taught me to sew when I was thirteen. That sewing was out of necessity. After age forty I came to recognize sewing as an art form." Cecile says of her work, "My language is universal, timeless and understood by all. I speak with stitches."

Gail Hanson
Gail has lived here most of her life, graduating from Washburn High School and the University of Minnesota. Most of her adult life she has been a teacher and when she retired from teaching in 1994 she took a quilting class at Edie's Quilt Shop in south Minneapolis. She quickly became fascinated with all aspects of quilting-the history, the endless patterns, the beautiful fabrics, the friendships with other quilters and joined Minnesota Quilters, Inc. She soon volunteered at monthly meetings and served on the Minnesota Quilters board and was president from 2005 to 2006. She has made quilts for weddings, baby showers, class and family reunions, fund raisers, in honor the 19th amendment (women's right to vote), and breast cancer awareness. Gail has attended many performances of Black Nativity over the years and has always enjoyed the brief glimpses of the quilts on display and is honored to be co-leading the creation of Penumbra Theatre's Black Nativity: A Season for Change quilt.

A Brief History of African American Quilting
By Sarah Bellamy, Education Director

One of the easily determinable links between the Old World of Africa and the New World established in the Americas is textile. Rhythmic patterns specific to various regions in Africa (e.g. the Mande from West 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 contribution of African American slave women to textile production and patterning is a history that is written largely through the pieces they sewed. Blending African aesthetics around rhythm, color and symbolism with an American experience of enslavement that contested family unity, spirituality and the very humanity of the people bound by it, these incredible artifacts detail a quieter, subtler story. Through expert use of plant dyes such as bark from Hickory, Walnut or Beech nut trees, cedar moss, pine straw and wild indigo, artisans worked with an impressive color palate.

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 denied access to the written word.

The majority of the quilts that were made and are preserved 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. The "Crazy Quilt" is reflective of a style that used scraps of found cloth and taught the youngest slave girls to sew quilts. In an economy of enforced poverty, in which human beings who were owned could own nothing in turn, there was nothing discarded, nothing refused. Largely utilitarian, these quilts were put to rigorous use and many did not survive. Surviving examples such as these "Crazy Quilts" signal a generational passing down of knowledge, of induction into symbolic language and womanhood as a rite of passage for young slave girls.

Want to know more about African American quilting? Download the study guide today!
Visit our study guide library where you will find a contextual essay, info on the author and much more about Black Nativity: A Season for Change.