Art

Bib & Tucker Sew-op to recognize Alabama’s unsung heroines

THE BIRMINGHAM TIMES — Every year since the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches in 2015, members of the Bib and Tucker Sew-Op have selected a human-or civil-rights theme around which they design quilts and foster open discussion. This year commemorates Alabama’s bicentennial, and the group will spend the year recognizing the state’s unsung heroines through its March Quilts project.

Published

6 years ago

May 3, 2019

Oakland Post

By Erica Wright

Every year since the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches in 2015, members of the Bib and Tucker Sew-Op have selected a human-or civil-rights theme around which they design quilts and foster open discussion. This year commemorates Alabama’s bicentennial, and the group will spend the year recognizing the state’s unsung heroines through its March Quilts project.

“Bib and Tucker started the March Quilts five years ago … to celebrate the [Selma to Montgomery marches]. … We wanted to do it through our art form, which is quilting,” said sew-op cofounder Lillis Taylor.

The group has stitched quilts that shed light on various issues, including gender pay equity, the 50th anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court ruling, environmental justice, and others. So far, the group has sewn seven quilts from more than 850 submitted blocks, the components of quilt designs.

Bib & Tucker Sew-Op is a nonprofit organization that promotes sewing and quilting whose mission is to cultivate skills for those who like to sew and serve as a place where everyone can be both a student and a teacher.

Its sewing sessions are held at venues like the Birmingham Museum of Art (BMA), where participants are taught how to make quilt blocks on seven-inch pieces of fabric that are used in quilts put together by sew-op members. Each block serves a vehicle through which a person can express feelings about a particular theme—this year is a celebration of Alabama’s unsung heroines.

“For example, everyone knows Rosa Parks, but we’re trying to shed light on those people may not know were part of movements or did things to move the state forward,” Taylor said.

“Claudette Colvin, the 15-year-old who didn’t give up her seat, kind of sparked the movement of Rosa Parks not getting up and . . . that led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.”

On Sunday, April 28, a group of multigenerational, multiracial, multicultural Birminghamians gathered at the BMA to begin work on this year’s theme. Past sewing sessions have lasted three or four months, but because of the state’s bicentennial sewing sessions will last through October, Taylor said. Participants are paying homage to exceptional Alabama women—including Colvin, Zora Neale Hurston, Harper Lee, and many others—who have helped shape the state and the nation.

Sew-op member Wilhelmina Thomas plans to design a quilt block in honor of African-American educator, philanthropist, and social activist Carrie A. Tuggle.

“She started the Tuggle Institute, which is now Tuggle Elementary School, but she was an educator for black children,” said Thomas. “When there was no one to educate black children and start a school for them, she decided to do that in Birmingham. The students were mostly orphans, but she gave them an opportunity to learn and to better themselves.”

Edwina Taylor plans to pay tribute to Parks and Colvin with a quilt block centered with a woman sitting on a bus: “I think it would be fun if I did a bus on a block with a little face on the bus,” she said.

The March Quilts project brings people together, Lillis Taylor said, pointing out that she and Bib and Tucker co-founder Annie Bryant come from different generations and different backgrounds.

“She is African-American, and I’m white, so the first year we did the project we really wanted to honor the fact that we could sit in a room and have this relationship,” Taylor said. “That was really the impetus for the project, celebrating the Civil Rights Movement, but we feel like sewing is a great vehicle for having conversations.

“We figure if we can get you to sit down and make quilt blocks, then we can start talking about things and finding out about our similarities, [which are more important] than our differences.”

For a detailed list of upcoming open sewing sessions, visit www.bibandtuckersewop.org or www.bibandtuckersewop.org/march-quilt-sewing-sessions.

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Griot Theater Company Presents August Wilson’s Work at Annual Oratorical Featuring Black Authors

The performance explores the legacy of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson whose 10-play Century Cycle chronicles the African American experience across the 20th century, with each play set in a different decade. “Half a Century” journeys through the final five plays of this monumental cycle, bringing Wilson’s richly woven stories to life in a way that celebrates history, resilience, and the human spirit.

Published

1 month ago

February 17, 2025

Oakland Post

Late playwright August Wilson. Wikipedia photo.

By Godfrey Lee

Griot Theater Company will present their Fifth Annual Oratorical with August Wilson’s “Half a Century,” at the Belrose on 1415 Fifth Ave., in San Rafael near the San Rafael Public Library.

The performance explores the legacy of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson whose 10-play Century Cycle chronicles the African American experience across the 20^th century, with each play set in a different decade. “Half a Century” journeys through the final five plays of this monumental cycle, bringing Wilson’s richly woven stories to life in a way that celebrates history, resilience, and the human spirit.

Previous performance highlighting essential Black American authors included Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Lorraine Hansberry with Langston Hughes.

The play will be performed at 3:00. p.m. on Feb. 20, 21, 22, 27, and 28 at 7:00 p.m., and on Feb. 23 at 3:00 p.m.

For more information, go to griottheatercompany.squarespace.com/productions-v2

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MLK Day of Service Volunteers Make Blankets and Art for Locals in Need

“Everyone has an opportunity to participate,” said Glenda Roberts, kinship support care program manager at CCYSB. “Our nonprofit organization and participants recognize how important it is to give back to the community and this is serving. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, ‘Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve.’”

Published

2 months ago

January 18, 2025

Oakland Post

Photo courtesy of the nonprofit.

By Kathy Chouteau
The Richmond Standard

The Contra Costa Youth Service Bureau (CCYSB) and Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church (BMBC) are collaborating with a team of volunteers for a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service, Monday, Jan. 20 that will wrap the community’s most vulnerable people in warm blankets and provide them with an uplifting gift of art.

Volunteers will kick off their activities at BMBC at 11 a.m., making blankets for the unhoused people served by the Greater Richmond Interfaith Program (GRIP) and art for those in convalescence in Richmond.

Others will get to work preparing a lunch of chili, salad, a veggie tray, and water for participants, offered courtesy of CCYSB, while supplies last.

“People of all ages are welcome to participate in the MLK Day of Service,” said Roberts. Volunteers can RSVP via phone to Glenda Roberts at 510-215-4670, ext. 125.

CCYSB Boardmember Jackie Marston and her friends donated the materials and supplies to make the blankets and art projects. The nonprofit is also providing the day’s complimentary lunch, as well as employees to volunteer, under the direction of CCYSB Executive Director Marena Brown.

BMBC, led by Rev. Dr. Carole McKindley-Alvarez, is providing the facility for the event and volunteers from the church, which is located at 684 Juliga Woods St. in Richmond.

Located in Richmond, CCYSB is a nonprofit youth advocacy organization that serves eligible children, youth, and low-income families with a variety of wraparound services so they can thrive. Programs include academic achievement, youth mentorship, truancy prevention and direct response.

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Vandalism at Richmond Ferry Terminal Saddens Residents

Residents have been lamenting the destruction online. Ellen Seskin posted photos of the vandalism to the Facebook group, Everybody’s Richmond, on Jan. 12, saying she encountered it while out on a walk. “It was on the sidewalk, the street, the doors to the ferry, even in the art installation and the ‘stone’ benches,” she said. “I reported it but knowing how slow they are about getting things done — I just know that the longer you leave graffiti, the more likely they are to spray it again.”

Published

2 months ago

January 18, 2025

Oakland Post

Graffiti mars the walkway at the Richmond Ferry Terminal. Photo by Kathy Chouteau, The Richmond Standard.

The Richmond Standard

“This is why we can’t have nice things,” stated the post on NextDoor.

The post referenced images of graffiti at the Richmond Ferry Terminal. Not just on the terminal, but also on public artwork, on trail signs, on public benches and the boardwalk.

On Wednesday, the Standard stopped by to see it for ourselves. The good news was that it appears the graffiti on the terminal and on the artwork, called Changing Tide, have been cleaned for the most part. But graffiti remained abundant in the area around the relatively new ferry terminal, which opened to the public just six years ago.

Graffiti artists tagged benches and the boardwalk. Cars that had done doughnuts in the street marked the cul-de-sac just outside the historic Craneway Pavilion.

A ferry worker told us the graffiti had been there since before he started working for the ferry service about a week ago.

A member of the Army Corps of Engineers who did not want to be named in this report called the scene “sad,” as “they’d done such a nice job fixing it up.”

“It’s sad that all this money has been spent and hoodlums just don’t care and are destroying stuff,” he said.

It wasn’t immediately clear how soon the graffiti would be removed. The Standard reported the graffiti to the city’s graffiti abatement hotline. We were prompted to leave a message reporting the address and location of the graffiti.

“It was on the sidewalk, the street, the doors to the ferry, even in the art installation and the ‘stone’ benches,” she said. “I reported it but knowing how slow they are about getting things done — I just know that the longer you leave graffiti, the more likely they are to spray it again.”

In the comment section responding to Seskin’s post, local attorney Daniel Butt questioned why there aren’t cameras in the area.

On Nextdoor, one resident suggested searching to see if the tags match any accounts on Instagram, hoping to identify the perpetrator.

On its website, the City of Richmond says residents should graffiti immediately call Public Works graffiti removal and/or Code Enforcement at 510-965-4905.

Kathy Chouteau contributed to this report.