Macon Magazine

APRIL/MAY 2020 | maconmagazine.com 33 "Never mind how you're supposed to make a quilt," she laughed. "I just saw these rows of blocks going across, and I joined them." Not long after that, a third grade McQueen liberated the oil paints from a paint-by-number set and created a scene of Mexican dancers on all four corners and in the center of a tablecloth. Her family saved her early artwork; some pieces can be found in her family tree quilt, on permanent display at the Museum of Arts & Sciences. She's saving more to use in future projects, quite literally creating art with the fabric of her life. Near the end of her time at Howard University, McQueen was introduced to textile design by a professor who noted her innate talent. She'd majored in English, but felt compelled by this new interest. With the support and encouragement of her boyfriend at the time, Marvin Holloway, she developed a vision of what she wanted her life's work to look like. "I had this five-year plan that I haven't completed yet, even though 50 years have passed," McQueen laughed. "I thought I might develop a textile design business. But first I'd have to teach myself textile design." During the late 1960s and early 1970s, McQueen began working with linoleum cutting for hand-stamping, painting and printing fabrics. She took various jobs, learning while working and absorbing the art around her. She started compiling data on present-day craft practices in the African-American community, meeting and talking to practitioners throughout the South. While visiting one artist's western North Carolina, shotgun house, something caught her eye. "I looked over and saw this pile of chaos. It was amazing. I'm in these people's bedroom, and I had to stop and ask to take a picture – it was a quilt made of neckties," McQueen said. In that moment, inspiration hit, and she saw the malleable potential in quilting. Flourishing and traveling to paradise A change of scenery happened for McQueen in 1976, when love brought her to Macon. "His name was Milton Dimmons, and he died exactly 10 years ago," she said. Dimmons and McQueen were work partners, though his background was in law. He helped her with the mechanical aspects of her art, made equipment, dealt with whatever money there was, kept them out of trouble with bills and taxes. "He was my best critic," she said warmly. "And it worked! Even though he wasn't an artist, he had a very keen vision of what was beautiful." During the next few decades, McQueen flourished as an artist, finding her niche in Macon and filling it beautifully. She had her own one-woman show at the Museum of Arts & Sciences, and she was able to leverage her accolades to earn grants to travel to Africa to study and teach. Her first grant came from the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest International Foundation. "I grew up reading my mother's collection of Reader's Digest Condensed Books, and I always wondered, why does she get these? Now I know she was supporting my grant," laughed McQueen. "I was steppin' in high cotton when I went to Africa with Lila Wallace's money!" Paradise – that's the word McQueen uses when discussing Africa. She experimented with different techniques for fabric printing there and taught at an arts school, but images of everyday African life resonate most with her now – the women she met walking down the road, or saw lined up waiting for a taxi to take them into town. "Nobody had any riches, but they all had tie dye and woven fabrics of all colors, and it was such a beautiful swirl," she said. "ey have a different appreciation of beauty than I think we have in this society. ey have so few material resources that they appreciate what they have, and they work to create beauty not just for themselves but for their community. It's actually considered good etiquette to be "I WANT MY WORK TO SPEAK OF THE BEAUTY AND HORROR OF LEARNING WHO I AM, WHERE I CAME FROM, AND WHAT I'VE SEEN." -Wini McQueen

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