Winnie McQueen: A New Kind of Story
Hey Sparkles! Happy Friday! For today’s Family Friday post, I will be writing about my Fun Friday from last week, when my family and I went to the Macon Museum of Arts and Sciences. This post will focus specifically on the limited-time exhibit, the works of Winnie McQueen, a Macon multimedia artist.
Winnie McQueen uses quilts to tell difficult stories, such as class, race, and gender. She is African-American and has visited the Ivory coast many times. All of her art is influenced by the natives of the Ivory Coast and the bright colors of cloth they make. She had many quilts on display, including the quilt she made to showcase her family’s story.
My personal favorite exhibit was the cotton bale quilt exhibit. It was a quilt put over a cotton bale, decorated with loose pieces of the cotton plant, with stories of slaves printed onto the quilt. Winnie McQueen found a way to record the previously untold oral stories of the actual slaves who lived during those times into a moving piece of art.
Being a writer myself, I admire storytellers from all walks of life. I am also an artist, so I enjoy looking at art others have created. Seeing Winnie McQueen’s exhibit made me awestruck at the genius of her work. It was just so beautiful, words can’t do it justice. Below is a picture of the African-inspired canopy of cotton cloth she created.
I also enjoyed the other parts of the museum, like the live animal show, the planetarium, and the dinosaur discovery dig. At the live animal show, we saw a bird, a hissing cockroach, an alligator, and an albino corn snake.
However, my favorite part was learning about history in such a beautiful, poignant way. Thank you, Winnie McQueen, for a glimpse into the darker side of history in such a lighthearted way. Well, that’s all for today, Sparkles. Thanks for reading, and Sparkles away!!!
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