There is a familiarity to witnessing life and the various events that take a moment of time and slice it into your soul. To know that your ideas and thoughts and feelings could make the difference in change coming or merely being held deep inside, like a wheezing breath…can be dynamic.

“I Witnessed” is a series that elects to engage. Among the first five art quilts that I created was “JailBird/Free Bird”. This piece speaks openly to two aspects of the same stigma surrounding incarceration and a needed change within society: Ridicule and Wrongful Imprisonment. `”JB/FB” uses appliqué, the confusing log cabin quilt pattern, stamping and burned images into leather strips and wood discs to bring certain ideas forward.

Using wood discs to burn the images of wrongly imprisoned and now exonerated thru DNA evidence, often 20 or more years into life sentences is lost on the viewer. However, a closer examination of those discs reveal the “age lines” familiar to the years of toiling away before being felled for man’s use or folly.

“Jailbird/Free Bird”

“He Spit His Whole Chew on My New Dress” Cruelty Comes For Us All

“From The Front Porch”

“He Put On His ‘White Man’ and Saved Our Town”

“Too Close To The Fire”

“The Highway 15 Accident”

“Am I Human To You Yet? : The Return of the African Dodger”

“Uncle “Monkey” Leaves The South”

“Many Rivers Still To Cross”

“Sons of Her Thunder: Not Another Boy Harmed”

“Fight Your Way Home: I’m Waiting. I’m Watching”

“Sorrow’s Crown” (collected)