Another country quilt cycle flipbook by ron norsworthy

Snake in the Garden. Another Country Quilt Cycle. 2017 matchbooks, cotton thread, felt 256.6 cm x 251.5 cm (101 in x 99 in)

COVER: Detail. Go High. Another Country Quilt Cycle. 2017

ANOTHER COUNTRY Quilt Cycle Another Country is a conceptual work comprised of thirteen large-format quilts by artist collaborative DARNstudio. The quilts are made of custom matchbooks that depict logos of places, businesses or communities where unarmed people of color have lost their lives, predominantly at the hands of law enforcement. The cycle’s symbolism is inspired by nineteenth century quilts used by abolitionists to help escaped slaves find their way north. Like their Underground Railroad predecessors, the Another Country quilts are symbolic signposts and contain messages conveyed within their materials, patterns, and stitching. The use of matchbooks bound down and together by cotton thread sewn in connecting crosses—creating the overall effect of a net cast over the surface of the matchbooks—serves as a multilayered metaphor for the traumatic, dehumanizing effects of chattle slavery. In examining these effects beginning with the capture and kidnapping of free people; the chaining together of their bodies during the Middle Passage; the binding of future generations to those previous and the enduring oppressiveness of systemic and institutional racism after the abolition of slavery in America, the ironic metaphor of the matchbook constrained by cotton thread is apt. Intentionally rendering the matches unusable by binding them in a large mass, the artists suggest through the repetitive and laborious fabrication of the quilts that the paradox of slavery and freedom continues to be an unweildy mantle overlaying the American democratic experiment.

Sandra Bland, 28

found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas on July 13, 2015

Michael Brown, 18

killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014

Philando Castile, 32

killed by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota on July 6, 2016

Terence Crutcher, 40

killed by a police officer in Tulsa, Oklahoma on September 16, 2016

Jordan Davis, 17

killed by a fellow patron at Gate gas station in Jacksonville, Florida on November 23, 2012

Eric Garner, 43

killed by a police officer in front of Bay Beauty Supply in Staten Island, New York on July 17, 2014

Oscar Grant, 22

killed by BART transit officer at Fruitvale Station commuter train stop in Oakland, California on January 1, 2009

Akai Gurley, 28

killed by a police officer in the Louis H. Pink Houses in Brooklyn, New York on November 9, 2014

Trayvon Martin, 17

killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Florida on February 26, 2012

Tamir Rice, 12

killed by a police officer at Cudell Recreation Center in Cleveland, Ohio on November 23, 2014

Alton Sterling, 37

killed by two police officers in front of Triple S convenience store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on July 5, 2016

The Matchbooks The front and back covers of the matchbooks commemorate the lives of eleven slain black people. Their inclusion in Another Country is symbolic of the countless others whose lives were senselessly ended because of the color of their skin. The front of each matchbook depicts a logo of where the killing occured. The back displays a code comprised of the deceasedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first and last initial and the date of their death. Both sides of the matchbooks are used to make the patterns. Although there may be many questions and issues clouding the circumstances of their demise, these are two facts that cannot be disputed. The variety of geographic locations where the killings occurred reveals that the devaluation of black lives is a pervasive one in America. For people of color there simply are no safe spaces. The only things that these eleven people have in common is their shared ethnicity and, with the exception of one, their lack of weapons when their lives were taken. To underscore the senselessness of these deaths, the artists produced many of the logos on assorted colors of matchbooks, using them interchageably, and often randomly, to create the patterns. In any given pattern, for instance, Sandra Blandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s matchbooks may have nothing to do with Michael Brownâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s... or it might. The Another Country quilts attempt to visually resolve the disparate factors of race, class and environment that played a role in the demises of these people while also centering them in the narrative themes of the patterns; literally stitching their lives into the very matter of the quilts.

The Patterns

Begun in 2016 as a response to a spate of killings of unarmed people of color by law enforcement, the media coverage of these events and the subsequent public response, the patterns are encoded messages designed to serve as visual reminders of the intransigent racial bias of American society—and it’s myriad applications— against marginalized communities. Each quilt is comprised of approximately 2800 hand-sewn matchbooks.

SNAKE IN THE GARDEN depicts snakes making their way through a flower garden. This pattern represents the symbolic serpent and the Garden of Eden. It takes the biblical metaphor for temptation and original sin and reframes it through the lens of misogynoir and racism. The biblical reference is also a comment about the hypocrisy of the use of bible scripture to justify bias.

BOW TIE, an original pattern from the Undergroud Railroad quilt codes, was a call to travel in disguise or to dress up so that the fugitives couldn’t readily be identified as slaves. It’s inclusion in the Another Country Quilt Cycle, with its supersized bow tie motif that becomes an hourglass when turned ninety degrees, begs an urgent examination of respectability politics, assimilation and code switching.

AS THE CROW FLIES is a reference—in its depiction of crows flying in different directions across a cartoon-like blue sky with fluffy white clouds—to the cruel irony, normalization and lasting effects of Jim Crow laws on American society. It also references early shooting gallery video games.

GO HIGH is a series of overlapping and interspaced ladders. Informed by Michelle Obama’s campaign speech for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, it enjoins, “When they go low, we go high.” The impossible, Escher-like composition of the ladders suggests that the statement works best in abstract.

LIAR’S SWAMP evokes camoflage or an imagined topographical map of green (land) and blue (water) with a white crosshair target (truth), that makes reference to Donald Trump’s campaign promise to “drain the swamp” during his 2016 presidential campaign.

KOOL AID is designed to resemble a giant image, obscured through exploded pixelation, that is indecipherable to the viewer. The name of this pattern alludes to the popular use of the term “drinking the kool-aid” to describe the pivotal role of fake news, obfuscation and “alternative facts” in impacting public opinion.

JAIL BARS is comprised of a single pattern of alternating “jail bars” rendered in different brightly-hued color combinations turned in different directions and a single key in each square. This quilt is symbolic of the confusing American judicial system and it’s historic bias against people of color. The simplistic, playful color palette belies the disproportionate, permanent and destructive impact of our prison industrial complex on communities of color.

AMPLIFY employs the ubiquitous volume icon, rendered on a large scale, to reference the increased exposure of police killings through dash and body cameras,technology and social media.

FRAMER’S FRAME is a series of concentric squares that overlap and interlock. It makes reference to historic and contemporary instances of false accusations against people of color resulting in concocted charges, harsh sentences, and in the cases of the individuals that inspired the Another County quilts: death.

DOUBLE CROSS uses color theory in it’s pattern: overlapping staggered yellow and blue crosses to create an intersection of green, thus creating an illusion of transparency, harmony and integration. This pattern is about “-splaining”. Specifically, “whitesplaining”: a portmanteau that means explaining race issues to someone, typically a white person to a person of color, in a manner that is regarded as condescending or patronizing and rationalizes racism in the process.

SHOO FLY is the second of the original underground railroad quilt patterns the artists updated for Another Country. It’s original meaning was used to point out an ally or someone who knew the patterns and could help escaped slaves on their journey. Slang from the same period referred to a police officer who exposed unlawful practices and corruption of other officers. The Shoo Fly pattern takes on new relevance when read against recent Justice Department findings of excessive force, poor training and systemic racism within several American police departments. MEMBA & WHITED SEPULCHER: These patterns are siblings and are literally opposites: Memba is all black; Whited Sepulcher is all white. Both are devoid of logos and are a minimalist counterbalance to the other patterns. Read together, Memba and Whited Sepulcher are a blatant reminder that the issue of racism in America is literally black and white.

Following Page: Detail. Shoo Fly, Another Country Quilt Cycle. 2017

About DARNstudio RE:MEANING DARNstudio seeks to investigate the built, designed, or otherwise manifested world we live in, break down it’s components and implicit meaning(s) and reassemble-often altering the pieces themselves in the process-in a means that questions it’s original purpose, utility or function. Their goal is to give new meaning to things, ideas and structures that are intrinsically and intractably tied to how humans live in a process that they simply call, “re:meaning”. Like their work, the invented label that describes their process can be read on different levels simultaneously: one reading is to assign an alternate meaning; to redo it. In this action, the new meaning may set up a challenge to the old. A second reading is a play on the usage of the word re followed by a colon to indicate about, regarding, with reference to... a word that is, paradoxically, ubiquitous and unknown. DARN is literally signaling that their work is “about meaning”. Through reassignment, remixing or altogether inversion, DARNstudio’s work is about looking under the surface of the purpose of things. These things may range from the macro and intangible (cultural institutions and norms) to the micro and concrete (mundane objects, words, expressions or phrases). Darn gleans new meanings from these things in their disrupted reconfigurations which triggers new dialogue on the commonplace, the happenstance, and the “extraordinary ordinary”. Nothing in their gaze is is too familiar. In fact, it is the all-too-familiar that provides the artists with their richest material. And in mining the banal, redefining banality itself as anything but. The physical form that their art takes is a direct result of the investigation and therefore secondary to the investigation itself. However, it would be false to assume that the aesthetic result is merely incidental. Their investigation is always pursued through an aesthetic lense and a quest for beauty. So, the final form of a given work serves as a physical entity that marks/documents their investigation in a visually considered and and arguably beautiful way. It is the aesthetic evidence of their inquiry. They are not constrained by conventional categories of art, medium or expected output and therefore encourage unconventional and unconstrained interpretations of their work. DARNstudio is a collaboration between partners and artists, David Anthone and Ron Norsworthy.

Another Country was created and is being fabricated at DARNstudio in Roxbury, CT. The name Another Country is a double entendre: it both reframes quilting as anything but what has been typically described, in certain circles, as “country” and pays homage to James Baldwin who wrote part of his seminal work of the same name in Roxbury as a guest of writer William Styron and his wife, Rose.

For additional information please contact Ron Norsworthy: ronor2000@aol.com or 917-482-1142

For additional information please contact Ron Norsworthy: rln@ronnorsworthy.com