in the CQA Quilting News – July, 2009
The Fire of Life, Tina Williams Brewer
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
By Mary Thomas, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
What makes someone worthy of a lifetime achievement award?
If that someone is artist Tina Williams Brewer, it includes the refinement of artistic expression to a level that has earned international attention, an in-depth exploration of heritage that has been shared and memorialized, generous mentoring of aspiring artists, patient teaching of scores of children and adults in school and residency programs, active membership in arts guilds and organizations, and community volunteer work.
The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts noted Brewer’s remarkable contributions to the region’s cultural richness and on June 12 honored her with a Lifetime Achievement Award, only the second ever granted. In a ceremony that included reading a proclamation from Pittsburgh City Council declaring June 12, 2009, Tina Williams Brewer Day, the artist was feted by friends and admirers.
A book, “Tina Williams Brewer: Guided by the Ancestors,” shares its title with a recent PCA exhibition and makes a sorely needed contribution to the documentation of our region’s artists ($25, at the PCA).
Brewer is of African-American heritage and weaves into the layered and embellished fabrics of her exquisite story quilts symbols that reference the African Diaspora brought about by slavery, African-American contributions such as jazz, and the joy that comes of deeply felt spirituality. A reverence for the contributions of those who have gone before permeates her complex, engaging work.
In an insightful essay, Samuel Black, curator of African American Collections at the Heinz History Center, examines both ethnically specific and universal aspects of Brewer’s story quilts. He addresses her expression within a larger context of African aesthetics and European quilting tradition, and also discusses specific pictured fiberworks in detail.
Also informative is commentary accompanying illustrations of 10 of Brewer’s most recent quilts. They were inspired by the upcoming centennial year of the Pittsburgh Courier, and images from the paper’s photo archives became part of the quilts’ historic and symbolic compositions.
“When I am working,” Brewer writes, “I often feel as if my fingers are being guided by forces I don’t completely understand, but that help me create far more insightfully and knowledgeably than I would be able to otherwise. I believe these forces are the thoughts, feelings and insights of my ancestors — those whose stories I try to tell.”
Brewer’s quilts have hung at, among others, the American Craft Museum in New York City and the U.S. embassy in Ghana. They are in collections such as those of the African American Museum, Dallas, the State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, and The National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, Wilberforce, Ohio. In such locales the stories continue to be heard.