I had very different plans for the Wonderful World of Colour
blog hop. I was through one project and half way through the other when a new
idea struck me. Perhaps some of you can relate.
On Friday night, April 15th, I was watching the Blue Jays
baseball game while working on my Wonderful World of Colour project. For those
who don't know, April 15th was Jackie Robinson Day: the 75th anniversary
of Jackie
Robinson breaking the colour barrier in Major League Baseball by
becoming the first African-American player in the league. It was also just the
previous week that America confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black
woman on its Supreme Court. These events got me thinking about a piece that I
finished a few weeks ago but hadn't yet had the opportunity to post about.
Last year, I had an opportunity through work to participate
in an online course called Confronting Anti-Black Racism. I found it to be a
very powerful experience. One of the things we did each week was write a
reflection, but I am not really a words person so I had a hard time putting my
thoughts into words. So, I also reflected through fabric.
As I sat in my craft room late on a Friday night, throwing
around bright and fun and colourful rainbow scraps, and listening to baseball
and just having a good time in general, I thought about the Blue
Jays home run jacket meant to honour the diversity of the team (it's a
great story if you don't know about it), and I thought about Jackie Robinson
and the difficulty he went through trying to be a major leaguer, and I thought
about the words "Wonderful World of Colour" and I knew what this post
needed to be about. We live in a world that is full of so many wonderful people
of so many different backgrounds and skin colours. And so, in my Wonderful
World of Colour blog hop post, I want to share my reflection piece to celebrate
the wonderful world of colour that we live in and all the things that are
happening to help make it a better place for the future.
I would like to add a couple of disclaimers about this post
before I continue:
- I am a
white Canadian woman who comes from a settler background, and as such I
have had opportunities in life that have not been available equally to
everyone. (Not sure if you caught the Canadian through my spelling of
colour and my watching of the Toronto Blue Jays :D.)
- This
is a personal reflection piece on a personal journey of reading and
learning, which I am still undertaking. I won't be able to adequately
explain all of my decisions and you may not agree with everything I've
said or done. That's okay.
Here is a view of the entire reflection piece. I mostly
worked in whites, browns and blacks. But I did add in some pink to represent
gender and some green to represent economic status, as those ideas also shape
identity and came up as additional themes in the books I was reading.
There were a few main themes to the blocks I made that I
will discuss below.
Inequality
These two blocks represent the fact that our society was built on the backs of black people. The first one also shows the (hopefully) historic hierarchy from darkest to lightest skin.
Diversity
In these first two blocks I wanted to show the spectrum of
colours that people come in.
This third block was to represent the concepts of segregation and integration.
The last block in this section was my representation of the idea of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. When we try to paint certain groups of people with broad brush strokes and fit them into a single identity, we miss the diversity and value that each individual brings.
Identity: Framing and Perspective
Identity is such a personal thing that is so influenced by
outside forces.
This first block is to represent how we frame our
identities. Sometimes we see our colour or culture or nationality as the core
of who we are with our gender and economic status radiating out from there.
Sometimes our gender or economic status is core with our race surrounding that.
It's different for every person and it's different for the same person at
different stages of life or in different interactions. Our background and our
experiences shape how we see ourselves and those around us.
This second block shows that how something is framed or the light that something is viewed in affects how we see it. Surrounded by the white frame, the brown center is dark, but surrounded by the black frame it is white. I think we quilters understand quite well that the fabrics we pair something with affects the colour it appears to be or which pieces of it really get pulled out/highlighted.
The third block represents the intersection of the different
parts of our life: gender, status, colour, background, etc. They all swirl
together to make us who we are. They are distinct but joined together.
These next two blocks really represent perspective. Although they look to be spirals, they are quilted entirely with straight lines. That's another reason I chose to use the snail's trail pattern in the block above because of the perspective of all of these straight lines coming together to create a swirling effect. Understanding that everyone is coming to the table with different experiences and that people's perceptions affect their understandings and their interpretations was a key idea that stood out to me in my readings.
I won't have to explain to the quilter's in the room why I also chose to use the tumbling block pattern. This pattern is all about perspective and completely depends on how you look at it. It is a great reminder that people can look at the same thing and see something completely different, and neither one is wrong.
Hope
I was doing my reading and reflecting right around the 1
year anniversary of the George Floyd murder. I wanted to include something in
my piece to be representative of the hurt and the struggle and the injustices
that so many have gone through, but I also wanted to speak to the awareness and
the momentum that these events inspired, and so I chose to use the fist symbol.
It was used before and it will be used in the future, but in my lifetime and my
experiences, this really resonates with the murder of George Floyd and the
protests that stemmed from this (and so many years of too many similar events).
Conclusion
I know this was probably not what you were expecting when
you came to my blog today for the Wonderful World of Colour blog hop, but it
was on my heart as being entirely appropriate for this blog hop and needing to
be posted, and I hope it gave you some food for thought.
 |
| I took it out for a glamour shot in the snow the other day. |
Friday April 22
Crafts and Math (you are here)
And Joan has made a lovely pinterest board of everyone's post that's a great summary.
Thanks so much for stopping by and going on this journey with me :). And you can check back in at a later date to see the other projects I had originally planned for this hop.
