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A Stitch In Time
Artist Marquetta Johnson shares legacy of quilting with new generation
By Isadora Pennington
“It’s kind of like jazz,” explains Marquetta
Johnson as she gestures at the quilts on
display in her studio. She describes her
work as simultaneously improvisational and
steeped in legacy and tradition. Johnson
shared an example: the great jazz pianist and
composer Thelonious Monk said that to
create improvisational music he had to work
hard at it. Similarly, Johnson knows how to
make quilts and what typically goes together,
which allows her to create with the freedom
of inspiration. “When you know the basics of
what works together, you’re like an alchemist,
you can kind of just put it together. I would
say the same thing about a quilter.”
Surrounded by finished pieces, materials,
and tools, Johnson speaks about her journey
as a teaching artist and professional quilter
from her small home workspace. A soft
light filters in from the window and patio
door, illuminating the cozy space. The
smell of incense lingers in the air and birds
chirp cheerfully at the feeders just outside.
Stacks of in-progress pieces are positioned
throughout the room and finished quilts
hang on the walls. An old iron sizzles idly
atop a table. Her workstations, set up to
accommodate her wheelchair, are peppered
with handwritten notes that outline her
current projects and to-do lists. When I
arrived, she was sewing a tree trunk, and she
spoke to me as the sewing machine gently
whirred in her hands.
Johnson has been working with textiles
since she was young. As a girl she had a
boundless energy that sometimes got her
in trouble. Calling it “a kind of mercurial
energy,” it wasn’t until later that she
discovered the value in her compulsion to
move and create. She struggled with self
regulation. One particularly attentive teacher
saw something in her and taught her how to
crochet, which set her on a path of creativity
and helped her to channel her energy
into learning and art. “Crocheting is like
mindfulness training that can help you learn
how to be still,” says Johnson. “That’s the first
step in learning how to be quiet.”
Creativity is not out of the ordinary
for the women in Johnson’s family. Her
great-grandmother was a seamstress and a
quilter who was so skilled she could create
entire outfits based on pictures from Sears
catalogues. Her grandmother also had these
same skills but was more of a folk artist,
working as a painter in a figurine factory in
Chicago before relocating to New York and
later returning to Atlanta in the 1970s and
again taking up quilting. “That just let me
know that even with the circumstances of
life for African Americans in the ‘30s and
‘40s, she was still able to find joy through
creativity,” Johnson recalls.
Her mother was taught how to quilt and
sew, but she had been part of a generation
that was enamored with city living and
desired store-bought items
as opposed to handmade.
And so, it was ultimately
her grandmother who
set out to teach her all
the traditional tools and
methods for quilting.
Today, Johnson is
building upon those
skills and seeks to bring
a legacy of skills from
the 20th century into
the 21st century. She
incorporates traditional
methods like lap sewing
into her practice, mixing
the old with the new, and
adding elements that she
feels broaden the appeal
of her artwork to a larger
audience.
“What I’m trying to
do is figure out a blend of
things that creates a style
that is contemplative,”
Johnson says. “That’s
where I’m trying to go
with it. I’m not trying
to provide you with a
memory or something
that’s familiar; I want you
to have an opportunity
to have that visual
experience that is simply
led by the elements of
art.”
Beyond the visual joy
that comes from gazing
upon one of Johnson’s
pieces, she has also been
drawn to becoming a
“multi-sensory artist” as
she calls it. During a stint
teaching at the Center for
the Visually Impaired, she
started thinking about
how people with visual impairments could
enjoy and appreciate her work. “I began to
wonder what’s beautiful for someone who
can’t see? It made me start looking at my
work in a whole new way.”
As a result, she has begun incorporating
baubles and beads into her pieces. She started
making the stitches big enough to feel, and
causing the fabric to bunch up, which allows
people with low or no vision as well as those
living with developmental disabilities to be
able to appreciate her works through touch
instead of only through sight. “Incorporating
that into my work makes me feel that I am
serving a wider audience.”
Johnson has also been a teaching artist for
more than 20 years. Whether she is leading
classrooms in schools, civic organizations,
community centers, the High Museum of
Art, or most recently a foray into Zoom
lessons, she can use her knowledge of the
fundamentals of art and her passion as an
artist to inspire and challenge children to
pursue art. By operating both inside the
classroom and in her studio, she is able to
lend unique insight to the young people she
teaches and be a part of a multi-generational
chain of creatives.
On her walls alongside her quilts are a
number of works by her late son, a treasured
portfolio of his work just waiting to be
seen by the world. Johnson hopes that by
pursuing her own creative career she can
also use it to showcase the works of her
family members as well. “What I want to
try to do is to build this legacy with my
artwork with the hopes that I can include
my grandmother, my sister, and my son,
and have people see our family’s legacy of
creativity. And see that it’s important. It
is important what we pass down to our
children. It’s important.”
On any given day you can find Johnson
quietly working in her home studio, dyeing
and painting custom fabrics, cutting,
piecing, and sewing her quilts. But she is
just as devoted to her work as an educator.
Reminiscing about the beauty of working
at the High Museum of Art and seeing
great artworks in person, she explained
just how moved she feels in their presence.
That enthusiasm for art is contagious, as is
her joyous approach to creation. Johnson
says that while she would always appreciate
more studio representation, what she truly
desires is to be a link in the chain connecting
creatives from the past to the future.
“What I want to do is encourage young
people to take up needles, to take up thread,
and change the world with it.”[E]
Marquetta Johnson
(Photos by
Isadora Pennington)
AtlantalntownPaper.com
July 20211INT0WN 39