Your Black History Month art post for today features quilting: by Beverly Y. Smith (born 1957), “Minerva,” mixed media quilt, graphite portrait, vintage flour sacks, ticking fabric, vintage bow-tie quilt patterns, drunkard’s path and patchwork quilt design, 71x40inches, completed 2022, ©️Beverly Y. Smith. #BlackHistoryMonth #quilting #blackart #blackartist #womenartists #womanartist

https://www.beverlysmithquiltart.com/artist-statement

https://www.instagram.com/quiltbev

From the artist’s Instagram: “After the Civil War, freed slaves placed wanted information ads in newspapers to find family members separated by slavery. The ads verify the persistent efforts made to reunite with love ones. Through my quilts, my ancestors beckon me to find family members separated as early as the 1700s and to call them by their names.
1. I found her…my gg- grandmother’s twin Minerva! They were born in 1821 and were separated during slavery.
2. The rocks which serve as headstones reveal a secret yet conscious coding system that the living slave community designed for their deceased. These small stones surrounded Minerva’s gravesite.
3. Cherokees believed that cedars contained powerful spirits, including the spirits of the departed buried beneath them. Eastern red cedar is known as the “graveyard tree.
4. My gg-grandmother Moriah born enslaved, owned by Jeremiah Blaylock
5. Toni Morrison speaks on connecting with the ancestors.”