Somehow I've become the repository for many family photos. This is both a blessing and a curse. I'm always concerned that they will be lost or damaged, and they take up some room.
The blessing is that they are a wonderful resource for art. This is a portrait quilt of my uncle Lee. I'm not sure, no one is around to tell me how old he was, but this looks like maybe his first school portrait. I just loved the expression.
I added the frog because every young boy needs a frog.
Some time ago I did a volunteer project for a wonderful organization called the Social Justice Sewing Academy Remembrance Project. Volunteers are to create a portrait for someone list to violence. This is from their website:
The project remembers those lost to: authority violence (officer-involved shooting, police brutality, etc.), community violence (victims of gang violence, neighborhood or family, drive-by shooting, etc.), race (hate crimes, racially motivated, etc.), and gender and sexuality (violence against LGBTQ +, domestic violence, “missing, murdered Indigenous women,” etc.).
This project was truly life changing for me. It set my art on a completely new path. After I submitted the first quilt I decided to do more portraits. When my father did in February, I realized that I wanted to make a second portrait for the project. Here it is.
