Sea Dragon

Year:

2023

Artist:

Kim F. Hall

Dimensions:

30H x 11W

Materials:

Cotton

Techniques/Style:

machine quilted, machine and hand embroidered, embellisted

Artist Note:

At the same time that a member of the African American Quilters of Baltimore challenged us to make a mini quilt page reflecting our quilting interests and aesthetics, I discovered that the carousel on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. was not only the site of a civil rights struggle in the Gwynn Oak amusement park near where I grew up, one of my parent’s friends was arrested trying to integrate that space. The Sea Dragon was one of the carousel animals gorgeously restored when it was moved from Baltimore to DC. and begged to be recreated in fabric. And of course you can’t have a mythical sea creature without mermaids! The mermaid “riding” the sea dragon is Sharon Langley, who was captured by a Life Magazine photographer as the first Black child to ride the carousel. The other mermaid is me at about that age. The lower half of the quilt includes part of a poem by a departed friend from Baltimore and a newspaper story about our family friend’s arrest.