A Communion of the Spirits
   Roland L. Freeman
  1996 Rutledge Hills Press, Nashville, TN USA
   ISBN: 1558534253


African American Quilters, Preservers and Their Stories represents the first national survey of African-American quiltmakers & a personal record how this photographer & folkorist's life has intertwined with the world of quiltmaking.

A Communion of the Spirits begins with Roland Freeman's childhood in the 1940s & proceeds through the decades, he writes: “Quilts were special, even magical to me. They could heal and they could curse; they could capture history and affect the future; they could transform pain to celebration.”

The communion refers to the power of quilts to create a virtual web of connections - individual, generational, professional, physical, spiritual, cultural & historical. Ronald L. Freeman's photographs are enchanting & beautifully display the bright & luscious quilts with names such as: Rainbow Block; Slave Chain; Log Cabin; Three Pigs in a Pen; Double Wedding Ring; Black Jack Scarecrow; Monsters, Dragons, and Flies; African Diaspora; African-American Women; African-American Men; Memories of My Father's Death; Memories; Scripture; Martin Luther King Jr.; Hand Me Down My Mother's Work; Mother Africa's Children; The Underground Railroad; Baltimore Arabber Selling Watermelons; Harriet Tubman Quilt; Tableau.

This communion I have known well with my dear quilting friends, Betsy, Jes, Jane & Lisa & all the other women who floated in & out of our quilt-making marathons. We drew the designs, assigned sections & met week after week, month after month & year in & year out - each year finishing a queen size beauty to raffle off during the Holiday Season to make money for the Wild Olympic Salmon restoration group. We called ourselves the Wild Olympic Women - WOW! Those stitches of friendship still bind us together with our memories & our stories.

Roland Freeman has recorded stories from young & old, men & women & from such well-known lights as Faith Ringgold & Nikki Giovanni; Rosa Parks & Maya Angelou; Sonia Sanchez, Bernice Johnson Reagon & Alice Walker to those with lesser known names such as: Nora Lee Ezell who was recognized in 1992 as a Master Traditional Artist; & Gussie Wells; The African-American Quilters of Baltimore; Sacred Sisters and brothers Mentoring Group in Franklin County, Ohio; Dorothy Moore Banks of Richmond, California who uses her quilt to teach African-American history in her classes; Damian Mazloomi & his mother, Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi, founder and coordinator of the Women of Color Quilters' Network; Anita H. Knox in Tarrant County Texas & Lula Mae Brown & her daughter Ruby Jean Brown in Logan County, Oklahoma.

You have got to read this book! It is filled with women & men & the love of materials & colors; of the love of design & community coming together to stitch lives together. From state to state, Roland L. Freeman has roamed, gathering stories & taking photographs of the family of women & men surrounded by their fabulous feasts of fabrics. I feel as if I've suddenly gained a sprawling tribe of relations, mentors, sisters & brothers; as if I could walk into any town in which these quilters live, with my “housewife” in my bucket & find a welcome in any community of quiltmakers.

For all those who consider quilt making one of America's finest crafts, A Communion of The Spirits: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and Their Stories will be a lifetime companion & will rekindle that dramatic & endearing form of art. Very well done!

Roland L. Freeman has been a field research photographer for the Smithsonian Institution for more than 20 years & has been recognized through awards & grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities & the National Black Arts Festival through its 1994 Living Legend Award. He is president of The Group for Cultural Documentation based in Washington, D.C. His successful commercial career has included assignments for Time; Newsweek; National Geographic; London Sunday Times(England); Der Stern(Germany) & Paris-Match(France)
(01/07/01)

Rebecca