AC
Amen, amen.
KPC
That sound like a sermon? It’s like, amen sister. Sister girl. Hey girl. Yes.
AC
Please allow me to read your bio. Kimberly’s quilt work represents an abstraction of real life. She began quilting and painting in the summer of 2006. She says of her work: “I have the power to create art in my life. I do that through my quilting. Sometimes I plan what I will do and sometimes I don’t. The result is always something I love. Everyone has the same power to create art in our own unique way.” And we will get back to that quote. Kimberly holds a bachelor of arts degree from Shaw University in radio television and film. She also earned a master’s degree in public affairs reporting from the University Of Illinois at Springfield. Kimberly has taught classes in quilting and sewing. She has shown her work locally around the state. Her work has also been shown in Quilting Arts Magazine and in the international magazine Quilt Mania. We have some things to talk about.
KPC
We need to. Yes, we do.
AC
First, let me congratulate you and your work in this exhibit.
KPC
Well thank you so much. Thank you for that introduction. And every time I read that intro that I wrote about myself, it’s like an out-of-body experience. You know, I did this stuff, of which I’m very, very proud. I’m just so excited to be a part of this exhibit at the Nasher. It’s one of the highlights of who I am. Of my life, of my art life specifically.
AC
Awesome. Well we are going to get to talk about all of that. Let’s start off a little, I guess, academic for artists. That’s as academic as we can get. So one of my questions is between definitions of viewpoint, opinion, or judgment, and/or the avenging or punishing of past mistakes or misdeeds, what exactly does reckoning mean to you?
KPC
It means that it is time for the pay up. Whatever happened in the past, it’s time for the sun to shine and it’s time for everything to be revealed. And you know, it’s just time for the big payback. Whatever that happens to be, in whatever situation. We all see you and we’re here and we’re ready.
AC
Okay, we are going to take a little deeper dive into that in a minute, but just to have the main words of this exhibition, I want to define resilience as an ability to recoil or recover after bending, stretching, or being compressed. So when you were invited to participate in this exhibition of Reckoning and Resilience, how did you decide what pieces you would showcase?
KPC
That is so interesting. I did not decide that way. Like okay I’m going to send this piece, I’m going to send that piece. When I was contacted about my work, Marshall Price—who’s one of the major curators for this event—saw my work at North Carolina Central University, at a solo show that I did and he liked the work that he saw with my piece with Fannie Lou Hamer and he wanted that piece. So I said, “Cool, I’ll send that piece.” And he said, “Okay, by the way, we like the Shirley quilt too. Why don’t you make that available?” And I said, “She is available. I’ll bring that too.” And then he said, “And then, by the way, we like the North Star piece too. Can you make that piece available as well?” So I didn’t get to do the choosing. Marshall did the choosing and I made the quilts available and that’s how they ended up in the show. So I have other pieces that talk to, speak to social justice and reckoning and resilience. But those were the pieces that he thought, and he had the vision for, to be a part of the show.
AC
We did go in to see this exhibit on the day that it opened actually.
KPC
[sing-song] Together.
AC
And yes, that was a great opportunity to do that.We walked into the gallery and we went turned left and boom there you were. My question would have been, in figuring out what pieces you were going to use, since you didn’t choose them yourself, how do you think that those pieces will be received by folks who view them?
KPC
I hope they’re received well. But I had lunch with Marshall Price prior to going to see the exhibit myself and he kept promoting it and getting me ready to go to see the exhibit. He said, “I think you’re going to like where we put your piece. And I was like, “anywhere you put my piece in this exhibit is fine with me.” And then Trevor Schoonmaker, who’s the Director at the Nasher, came through and I said, “Hi Trevor,” and he said, “I think you’re gonna like where we put your quilts in the show. So I said to myself, “well this must be a really good place that they put my quilts in the show.” So we had lunch and then we kind of walked around and talked a little bit and then Marshall said, “Well let’s just go in and see it.” And I turned the corner to the left and there was my Fannie Lou Hamer quilt and I was almost in tears. It’s the first thing that you see if you go in that direction and if you turn in the other direction, there’s a painting, holding an American flag, a young woman holding an American flag and the name of that painting is Liberty [Enlightening the World]. And Fannie Lou Hamer has “Justice” on the bottom with the Jim Crow images. So “justice” is on one side, “liberty” is on the other side, and “for all” is in the middle. So I’m very, very excited about the positioning of my pieces and then I was in the museum and I was watching people as they came through and they, you know, went up to my pieces and it took everything for me not to go up and say “I’m the artist. Hey, that’s my work.” That would have been so uncouth. But I just had to restrain myself. I wanted everybody to celebrate my quilts and me because I was there. But yeah, I’m just so pleased that to open to the left is my responsibility in this show and I’m very honored to have that space.
AC
As you should be. But I just want to say, you know, next time you can kind of warn a sister, because I was just like, “Oh my God there you are,” And it was just so appropriate. I have to tell a little funny story of you don’t mind—our little getting in trouble in the gallery when we were talking about—you remember that? I just have to tell it because I think it’s hilarious. We’re talking about—as if we were in our own little living room talking—about the North Star quilt and the lines and how you how it came to be and I think you got a little bit too close to it. And the guard came through. He’s like, “You can’t touch that.” And it was hilarious trying to get him to believe that you were the artist.
KPC
Maybe you weren’t supposed to tell that. Even though I’m the artist, maybe I wasn’t supposed to touch it. I’m not going to say his name, he might get in trouble but afterwards I took a selfie with him so I could remember.
AC
But I think he’s doing his job to the utmost, so thank you to that young man. So I say all that to say that you should have no problem telling people that you are the artist.
KPC
It was hilarious. He was like, “oh lady, please do not touch that” in his authoritative kind of “I’m, you know, I want to do it gently but I want to let you know I mean business.”
AC
But I think that your piece is, especially in this day and age with what’s going on in this country, those pieces in particular—starting with Fannie Lou Hamer—will be very proactive and stir up some good conversations, which is what we want art to do.
KPC
That definitely is my hope.
AC
Well I think you mentioned it several times, but one of my questions is: how are you feeling about this project?
KPC
I’m feeling so good about this project. When I went through and I looked at all of the other artists and their presentations, I said, “if the world isn’t ready for this, the world needs to get ready for this.” There was such strength and there were so many voices and Black artists and People of Color artists and marginalized artists have voices and they have powerful voices in this show. So I don’t know whose idea it was to do this, but it is an amazing idea and such a wonderful show. And I even know some of the artists personally and that was another thing that excited me. Beverly McIver, she is my she-ro, William Paul Thomas. I’m going to tell you a really quick story about William Paul Thomas. So he lives near where I work, at North Carolina Central University. And one day I called him up and I said, “William, can I come to your house and maybe you’ll work with me on some of my painting strokes.” He said “sure, come to my house.” William Paul Thomas: “Sure, come to my house. So I was like, “if you ask, you shall receive.” So I go to his house with my little paintings and we’re working and I just have a lovely time. Just beautiful, just elegant, gorgeous man. So after that, I’m pulling out of the driveway of North Carolina Central on my way home and who walks down the street but William Paul Thomas. I was so excited, I said, “what are you doing out here?” He said—I’m so goofy—he said, “I live in this neighborhood.” And I was like, “You’re so special. You should not be walking, just walking around just unchaperoned in the neighborhood,” But he’s such a beautiful, beautiful person. And um, who else? Saba Taj. Just lovely gorgeous spirit, powerful woman with just amazing artwork. I saw her artwork and I almost fainted dead away, just so beautiful. Julia Gartrell and her trailer, her fix-it trailer in the back. She’s just such a gentle person with such strong ideas about what it’s like to be human. And I was just blown away by the opportunity to be in the presence of these people who I looked up to with their art on the wall and here my art is on the wall. So I just cannot just say how much I really appreciate being among the number represented in this show. My voice will speak to all of the people who walk through to see their voices , will speak and will all collectively speak very loudly about reckoning and resilience not only in North Carolina but in the world.
AC
Amen. I only know a few of the artists that are in this besides yourself, but I stayed longer than I probably should, as my husband and my son were out in the front waiting for us after they had viewed it. But I don’t think I’ve spent this much time in a gallery actually looking at pieces. So I agree with what you’re saying. You know, I’ve always heard this term art imitates life, but does life imitate art? And all of these pieces really do give you something to think about.
KPC
So listen, you are my she-ro and you definitely are my art crush. So when I was told that you were gonna be interviewing me, I was grinning just like this, ear to ear, because I have just admired you for so long. When your Ngozi store was a storefront up on Main Street in Durham, I would always pop in, because my friend Pamela Bond was there. So it was a really beautiful place to hang out where people were sewing and creating and there were all these designers and their wares were lined around the walls. It was always a warm place and then I had my art crush, I’m not gonna say his name, I fell completely in art love with him. But just to see you work and to see you open a place where other artists had an opportunity to show their wares, it always impressed me and I thought of you as a cultivator of culture in Durham. So how did you come to do that kind of work? I know that you were, that you are, a seamstress and you have a great history in that work. But that Durham location, what was the impetus for that? And then just how did it go?
AC
Okay, this was not supposed to be making me cry, but they are happy tears and I miss that particular location. I’ve always had that type of feeling of wanting to share what I do with other people, whether it was incorporated or whether it was in my new life as an artist when I came to Durham. Durham makes it so easy sometimes to collaborate with the other folks. I knew that I liked what I did. I was working with a boutique right next door actually, for about 5 years after I came to Durham from Georgia from New York from New Jersey, but we were doing consignments and there are just so few places where you can share an opportunity for small businesses, small artists to show what they do. We started doing it at Exotique, where they had maybe less than 10 artists and we went in there and we just boomed that up to I don’t know how many and actually someone recommended to the person that owned the space next door that we wanted to open a store. I don’t know where they got that idea from, I had no idea about it, but I did have a dream years and years and years ago about one day opening a store and so we took the plunge. We did it. Started with 7. We said that we had to close it after maybe four or five years, but it was just a lot for me to do and I did want to get back to my art. I’m working on a project now, hopefully that we can bring something like that back to Durham. But the bottom line is I love to collaborate and so that’s how all that came about.
KPC
I mean I just love your vision about sewing and your craft art. And we did a photo shoot in that gorgeous, gorgeous coat that you were in, that was something that you made. And you know I was threatening you the whole time like I am going to, I don’t know what I got to do but I’m going to get that coat. So can we talk about your design principle and then how you approach putting thread to cloth?
AC
Another thing I had in my head for years before I actually retired from the corporate world was being able to make a gown from remnant pieces of fabric. So that’s kind of what I did. I worked with Nnenna Freelon in a project years ago called the Clothesline Muse http://theclotheslinemuse.com/ and I really was trying to start playing with making garments out of pieces of material and trying to imagine what our ancestors did and how they repurposed things and made quilts and sewed clothes and did all that kind of stuff. Of course my mom taught me how to sew, but it was different than what I had in my mind. So she taught me the techniques, she taught me how to use a sewing machine, but putting pieces of fabric together I think it was just the right timing when you have conversations about sustainability, imagination, language, you know, how we communicate to each other with what we wear and what we look like, and color and technique. So I’m trying to put all that together and come up with ways of speaking about how I feel about and about the language of cloth, basically.
KPC
So full disclosure, you give me your scraps, full disclosure. And when I went through the last bag, oh I did a little happy dance because, I mean, not everybody is that generous. And all of it is African print fabric. So do you work outside of African print or is that basically where you find yourself?
AC
I do work with all kinds of fabrics. I don’t particularly like working with novelty fabrics like satins and polyesters and things like that. Number one, because they’re not natural fibers but number two, because they’re very weird. Trying to sew if you’re not really trained and I am, for lack of a better phrase, a self-taught, you know, seamstress with my mom’s guidance. So I’ve been sewing for over 40 years but basically now, my passion is learning about African textiles. African prints are not particularly African textile, it’s inspiration from Indonesian Batik, which is where it started years ago, but 100% cotton is easier to sew. So I don’t have to necessarily think about the technique of sewing so much as the creation of a beautiful piece that speaks to folks outside of myself.
KPC
What about Reckoning and Resilience for you? When you went through the museum to see all of the pieces, what did you come out with on the other side?
AC
Well I’ll be honest, one of the reasons I wanted to join Golden Belt was so that I would be immersed in an environment of artists and be able to collaborate and talk and learn. So when I went through the exhibit, I think we went in two different directions and it just was such a heartfelt experience, an emotional experience to kind of see what other people are thinking and how they express themselves. With cloth or with paper or with canvas or with, you know, putting mixed media. I never had an opportunity to be around folks or to be around pieces like that. So when I walked through, like I said, I took longer than I probably should have at that point, but it was very heartfelt. Things that I didn’t necessarily witness myself even at my age, because I was born in New York, so I didn’t even experience some of the things that people experience down here that are my age. One of my seamstresses is a little bit younger than me actually I think, but we would sit and talk and she would tell me all about, you know, underground railroad quilt codes and hanging quilts on the fence and different kinds of trees to identify safe houses. So to see—I don’t know the ages of the artists in this exhibit but, they are a variety, I do know that—and to just see their perspectives was kind of really heartfelt. It was an experience. So back to you, because there’s some things. So back to you…a sister’s got questions.
AC
I wanted to know. Do you have any specific connections women who quilt, folks who have quilted in our past, and women who quilt now?
KPC
Girl, I am a part of the African American Quilt Circle of Durham, North Carolina. And because of the quilt circle, I am who I am today. One of the founding members of the Quilt Circle asked me to make a quilt in 2006 . I’d never made a quilt before. She said whatever you make, we’ll hang it up. I was like, “Okay, I’ll do it, I’ll try it.” So I brought my quilt to the show, they hung my quilt up, and a French photographer who was there from Quilt Mania Magazine took a picture of my quilt and put it in the magazine.
AC
Alright now!
KPC
All right now! And I didn’t even know it was in there, so when the magazine came out, they brought it to me and I started crying. I started crying and they were like, “Why are you crying?” I was like, “this happened to me, because I follow directions.” So from that moment until this moment, whenever I get the feeling or somebody asks me to do something and it’s in my power, I try to do it. And then from there, blessings just come to me in my art life. So because of the Quilt Circle, I would not have experienced that revelation in my life. And I’m forever grateful to those sisters. I mean, if you make a quilt and it’s upside down and sideways and bring it to the Quilt Circle, they will applaud you, bow down as if you are like the majesty of quilt work, and you just put some stitches in it because, you know, you wanted to. But it is love, it is sisterhood, it is a bright star in a place where I just found some of who I am. And I will always be grateful to those women. And whenever you do something, whatever you do, everybody puts up, “I did this today. My work is going to be here.” Everybody applauds, everybody comes out of the woodwork. For whatever it is that you’re involved in at the time. So it’s sisterhood with all of those contemporary quilters. And some of them have been doin this, I think, since 1998, is when it all started. And I’m just blessed to be a part of what that group has become. And it’s so sad. COVID, it just wrecks everything. We haven’t been able to meet since the beginning of COVID, because our home base is at the Hayti Heritage Center here in the heart of downtown Durham. And we just haven’t been able to touch, but we’ve kept up on Zoom. So, you know, it’s a blessing and a curse. We’ve not dissolved. We have a strong resolve to still be a group, and here we are. So all those ladies—you know, the older ladies who come to visit, the young people who come, just like I came and couldn’t make a quilt. You know, we just all make up such a melting pot of fire and hot sauce and chocolate.
AC
You’re not kidding. You know, I did that once with the church. We were working on a quilt in my church, Great Rock, and I didn’t appreciate, at the time, the sisterhood. Now I’ve gone to 15,000 sister circles. But the sisterhood of quilting. It was like, just give my blocks, tell me where I’m going to be, and I’m going to take it home and do it myself. I didn’t appreciate the sitting around and chatting and sharing stories and doing all that. But I’m gonna do better on that one. My daughter-in-love—I will say, because everybody asked me if I had a girl, now I didn’t give birth to her, but I love her to death—my son’s wife. She does podcasts, so I was asking her like, “Oh, what do I do? What do I do? I have to do this thing tomorrow.” And she was like, “well make sure that you, you know, ask a question about quilting, because people don’t just up and start quilting.” And I was like, “Well except for your mother, who started one 40 years ago and just finished it last year.”
KPC
Ah yeah, I think that’s probably the longest ever in the history of quilting. 40 years ago. You need to put, like my sister says, some whip to your horse.
AC
So that was what made me appreciate. When people talk about doing a quilt, that’s some work right there.
KPC
It is. It is some work. And I’m the kind of quilter, I don’t use the blocks. My quilts are always like portraits, or abstract, or something like that. I just don’t have the patience for it. But I applaud all of the women who could put blocks together. A nine patch, I don’t even know how to even begin to approach it. But, you know, it’s appreciated. So I’m good.
AC
Yes, well as the kids say, mad respect for that. Mad respect.
KPC
Mad respect for anybody that can draw a straight line. I’m out.
AC
What is the legacy or narrative that you hope your work leaves behind? Where do you find inspiration?
KPC
I find inspiration from everywhere. And I love doing women’s portraits, especially women who have not had a voice in history. When people see my quilts in the future—because, you know, I’ll be dead and gone—maybe 100 years from now, I just hope that they’ll still see voice in what I did. And if they’re historians and they’re looking at what happened in the past, I hope that what I did made a mark on history and it can be like a piece of the puzzle to tell the story, especially about black history There’s so much that we don’t know about who people are that we stand on the shoulders of, and I’m standing on somebody’s shoulders, and I want somebody to stand on my shoulders. And I’ll try my best to be a bridge and great support for them. I love sister quilters, I love Black women, I love us so much and I just want us to love each other. We’re powerful beings, great spirits, and so much love. So yeah, that’s what I want people to think about: love. And I’m putting another piece together in the puzzle of African American history in this country.
AC
Well I have to say I am honored. When we did meet up a few days ago, you blessed me with a framed piece of your art and it has taken a prominent place in my studio. And I don’t know how you do what you do. But I’m going to keep doing what I do and stay in my lane, as they say. But I just want to thank you. It’s interesting to me that you can know somebody for so long and really not do those deep dives to find out what motivates you. You know, how do you manage your day. I did promise I was going to get back to that everybody creating art in their own way. So I want to ask you a little bit more about that. What is your favorite way to express yourself and what did you mean by that?
KPC
Yeah, so I love folk art painting. I love when people just throw paint up there and we just wait to see what happens and its art. So if you’re thinking, “well, I can’t create anything.” Yes, you can. And it’s just your own way of creating. And in my opinion, no judgment. If you think it’s art and it’s yours, then that’s what it is. It’s art. Period. End of story. So that’s what I meant by that. Everybody creates in their own special way.
And I want to get to something too. Like you said, we’ve all just known each other for so long. So you said to me, “You know, I’ve known you all this long time and I didn’t know that you were on the radio.” And I said, “That could really happen, because, yeah, I mean, everybody doesn’t have to know Kimberly Pierce Cartwright as a radio personality.” But that was funny to me, because we did know each other for a while.
AC
Exactly, for years and years. And we knew the same artists and circle. And I’m in the car and I’m so glad I wasn’t driving because I was like. And this is Kimberly Pierce Cartwright. And I’m like, “I know her!”
KPC
Yes, it’s me. I’m Kimberley.
AC
We will definitely be doing some things going forward and sharing in that spirit of love and sisterhood and you know building up our shoulders. My shoulders aren’t huge but I might be able to hold up one or two folks.
KPC
Yes, I think so. You’re already holding us up in blessings.
AC
[Blows kiss] Love you, girl. And congratulations.
KPC
I love you too. Thank you. And you keep pressing, because there’s some things out there that I’m sure that you’ve got your eye on as far as lifting people up in art. And I applaud you for the forward thinking and the vision.
AC
Well, you’re right about that. I do and I’ll be counting on you guys to come along with me. Love you.
KPC
Alright now. Love you too.
