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PAUL:

What do velvet, polyester and cotton have in common? No, it's not a fashion trend. It's the threads that weave together the powerful stories of resilience, creativity and community. And these stories aren't just sewn into fabric. They're stitched into history.

Hey, it's Paul Wolf with the front-row seat to conversations on culture from Jackson, Mississippi. We call our podcast Soul Sessions. It's the people, places and events that make the City With Soul shine. On today's show, we're exploring the Mississippi Museum of Art's latest exhibition, ‘Of Salt and Spirit Black Quilters in the American South’ with guest curator Sharbreon Plummer. It's an extraordinary look at over 50 quilts that tell the story of a region, a people, and an enduring legacy of art.

How did you approach selecting the specific quilts or artists that would be representative of such a broad and diverse tradition?

SHARBREON:

That's a wonderful question and one that it was very challenging, to say the least to make that decision. But a few things stood out to me, of course, a variety across regions. So as best I could, I wanted each southern state represented in some capacity, be it through a quilt or photograph. But as I was thinking about the women and their stories, I did my best to lean into working with information or working with, I should say, resources that felt a bit more abundant. So across the collection, the Museum, of course, has such a saturation of quotes from Mississippi, which is amazing. So there's a really strong presence of that. But within the archives and the bequests they got from Roland Freeman's estate, he was a really meticulous record keeper and had all these life stories and oral histories. So as best I could, when I started reading the transcripts and going through his archival boxes, I wanted to work with quilts and quilters that I could give the audience a bit more insight. Their voices could be present where possible. Because, so often when you go to a museum, you see something on the wall, it's like, ‘Okay, great.’ But quilting is such a really beautiful thing that is deeply steeped in folks' lived experience. So I wanted to be able to have some of that present as well so they could really connect with both the maker and the work.

PAUL:

We were talking earlier off mic how this exhibition really feels comfortable and homey. And I mentioned to you that someone said, ‘It feels like I'm at my grandmother's house.’ It's just so colorful and rich. This is something that, really, people can relate to. Everyone had a grandmother who had a quilt on the back of her chair over her lap when they went to visit. Do you think that makes this exhibition even more relatable?

SHARBREON:

I would say yes for a multitude of reasons. One, the quilts themselves, I think, are very reminiscent of a certain aesthetic in time that invokes this sense of nostalgia because many of the quilters enrolled and interviewed them, they were up in age and so they span from, I believe, 1940s into the early 2000s. But I don't know if you've experienced this, but have you ever maybe seen a meme or a photo or you've even seen a blanket that has a particular pattern where you're like, ‘I had those sheets or my mom had those curtains?’ And I feel like the quilts themselves possess some of that. And then there's imagery too, Robin Dietrick, who's the exhibition designer, did a beautiful job of taking these images that we found in the archival boxes and they're blown up and embedded throughout the galleries as well. So you kind of are immersed in those, but they feature imagery, not just of women, but also place certain times in history that I think will also invoke that feeling. So you not only have the quilts, you have a little bit of folks' interior worlds and homes in a way that might feel a bit reminiscent of your own life, as well as the landscape of the South that, you know, the Mississippi Museum of Art is literally embedded in and we're all a part of. And I think the combination of sort of outside and inside and the quilts themselves come together to really drive home that feeling of home.

PAUL:

You've described the quilts as artistic and deeply narrative. Can you share some of the specific personal stories that you've learned behind some of these quilts? Are there any that stand out to you?

SHARBREON:

So many, so many. I've learned that Roland, in addition to him just being a very relational photo documentarian and folklorist, a lot of his experiences extended far beyond him just interviewing quilters. They would collaborate on commissions. He would quilt. He might design something… someone else would quilt something. We have really beautiful stories of legacy and lineage where you have a mother who was a quilter and then taught her daughters how to quilt and then they collaborated on quilts together and you see that.

You have the beloved Miss Hystercine Rankin, who taught so many people. They're very clear—the quilts, as I should say, that she taught were very clear— about the role that she played in their lives. And so, to be able to have their quilts in conversation with one another on the wall and just that background and that history present in the galleries feels really special. Those I would say are just some. I could go on and on because there's so many.

But to me, it's the local sort of networks and relationships, but also the very collaborative way that folks thought about quilting and for many of them, how it was good for their soul, their mental health. There was a lot of discussion from women who would have been my great-grandmother's age. We didn't talk about meditation or a meditative practice, but Ms. Rankin, for example, spoke quite a bit about how quilting calmed her mind and, in some ways, really gave her the energy and sort of boost to talk to people in a way that she didn't previously.

PAUL:

The exhibition includes a lot of engagement spaces where visitors can have a tactile experience of their own. How do the spaces enhance the public's understanding and appreciation of the quilts and their cultural significance?

SHARBREON:

Yes. So, we really worked hard and by we, I mean myself along with education, the curatorial team at MMA, to think about how we pushed beyond just seeing the object on the wall. So there are a few things you get to one, touch labels, not the quilts, please don't touch the quilt, but you have touch labels where you sort of get these vignettes or snapshots of things that are included in quilts, because some of them are really cool. There's buttons, there's lace, there's velvet, there's wool. And seeing those textures, just, it's human nature: folks want to touch it. So, we want it to be able to take some of that off the wall or off of a pedestal and allow folks to experience that. So, you get that element of it.

There's an engagement space where you can actually sort of construct a block yourself using fabric and a paper template. So, you kind of understand the thought and the planning and the labor a little bit that goes into making the quilts themselves. And then also you see—what I'm really proud of—you see these bits of sort of language and history. You have quotes from Black feminist writers who were like theorizing about quilts in a really special way. You get a zoom into Roland's process and really see the labor and time that not only went into documenting all of these women, but the richness of their stories.

One that stands out to me, for example, is Dr. Maya Angelou talked about—after she had, I believe, won a Pulitzer—she was just in a really rough place. She was working on a book that she knew was gonna be really challenging, and her mother gave her a quilt and said, ‘You take this quilt, you go sit outside under this tree, you'll be able to write.’ And she talks about how that connection, not only support from her mother, but connection to the quilt, sitting with it, being in nature really sort of unlocked something for her to be able to push through and do that. So you get so many facets, you get to have that experiential piece, but you also get a lot of narrative and history that, you know, isn't commonly on display.

PAUL:

And the Kohler Foundation gave a gift of Roland Freeman's collection that greatly expanded MMA's holdings. What impact has this collection had on the museum's ability to explore the history and artistry of black quilters?

SHARBREON:

You know, it's so special to me because not only did they receive the quilts, but I don't know that many folks know that they received archival boxes with files from nearly each state that he went to. And this includes transcripts from interviews, photo negatives, Polaroids he took, even forms where—in addition to permission forms, he was very big on consent and informing folks about what he was doing. But you also have questionnaires, other things that folks talk about what quilting meant to them, where they learned it from, other influences. And so not only do you have these pieces that are sort of representative of the larger US, but you also have a lot of quilts and documents and other ephemera that's returning home. He spent quite a bit of time in Mississippi. He worked as part of the Folklife Commission and just had really deep relationships with local folks like the Crosby's and others. And within that, he was able to, in some ways, really create this beautiful sub-archive that was just Mississippi-focused. So now, based on some of the quilters that they already had in their collection previously, folks they've worked with, there's added information to sort of brighten and broaden what they already know and have about the quilts in addition to some scholarship that isn't necessarily available to the public. His book, ‘Communion of the Spirits,’ it's still a tome that it's one of a kind. We don't have anything like it. And so to have all the context and the history that went into that is really rich and is really special.

PAUL:

This exhibition is going to travel all over the country. And so what conversations do you hope it will spark about the American South and outside of the American South?

SHARBREON:

It's my hope that folks perhaps think about how they can deepen their own research about the region or even perceptions about the region. One of the things that I jokingly say all the time and folks who've attended have heard me say this, I don't like when folks treat the South as a place that time forgot. I'm from Louisiana, so home is really important to me. Frankly, quilt making within the South, the South is a home place for it. It's a birthplace. And it's something that carried throughout the states and beyond. So I think it's important for folks to really dig into those origin stories, but also to think about their own relationship to preservation. These women who quilted. They weren't trained archivists. I call them everyday archivists, but they understood the necessity of preserving culture, leaving something behind, working within community. And it's my hope that through these examples and through Roland's work as well, folks will maybe renew or become reinvigorated as far as their perspectives about the region, but also get curious about what they can do as everyday community members and citizens to not only preserve this history, but the history of our home as a whole.

PAUL:

That's Sharbreon Plummer on ‘Of Salt and Spirit,’ now on view through April 2025 at the Mississippi Museum of Art. Sharbreon mentioned several programs over the coming months that allow you to interact with their artists and residents and local quilters, learning directly from the makers themselves. Find links to these exhibition details and these community opportunities in our show notes at visitjackson.com/soulsessions.

Our podcast is produced by Visit Jackson, the destination organization from Mississippi's capital city. Our executive producers are Jonathan Pettus and Dr. Rickey Thigpen, and I'm our managing editor. If you want to know more about the events and the great things going on in Jackson, we keep you up today at VisitJackson.com.

I'm Paul Wolf, and you've been listening to Soul Sessions.

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