Holding onto Hope

2020, 22”L x 18”W, hand-dyed cotton fabric, linoleum block print, machine-quilted, hand-embellished.

This is about all the black grandparents who moved from the South to the North during the Great Migration of the 1910s through the 60s to give their families a better life. Many people had to change from living a rural life to an urban one, and gardening became a way of preserving the need to be close to nature.

I carved a linoleum block with the image of a person holding a potted plant, and thread ‘painted’ the orange pot and green seedling over top of the print. The leaves above and below the person are magnolia leaves printed on fabric and embellished with glow in the dark beads.