Macon Magazine

34 maconmagazine.com | APRIL/MAY 2020 well-dressed, well-groomed. ey haven't dressed for the camera like we might. It's a whole different motivation." Sustained by memory After a series of people close to her died, among them her husband and her gallery representatives, McQueen said, "I was out there. I was alone. I had to rethink everything." With her partner in work and love gone, McQueen felt adrift, but anchored herself with the familiarity of creation. "I didn't have help moving and stacking and making machines and devices," she said, "but I started working small – making notecards, hand-dyeing socks." Her family kept her afloat during rough moments. "I had seven sets of aunts and uncles, grandparents, mothers, all these people who supported me and encouraged me to be a learner. I don't think they meant for me to be an artist," she laughed. "Even at that time, art was a very vague thing. But they gave me whatever knowledge they had. ey weren't always sophisticated but they taught me the things they knew. And they always told me that the most important thing in life is what happens in your mind, in your brain, between your two ears. eir memory sustained me." And on a larger scale, community and the fire of activism and social justice kept her afloat. Being an active participant in the Civil Rights Movement was both an honor and a reminder that there was always more work to be done. "When I was a little girl, I saw the lowly position that black people had in our society and I thought, I wish things were better than this. e Civil Rights Movement was my opportunity to develop a desire for what I wanted to see happen – and basically, for me, that was employment, rewarding employment. I grew up in Durham between the two campuses at Duke University, and many people in my community were servants to Duke. ey cleaned, they cooked, they laundered. I knew the difference. I did not want to be that kind of victim, and that probably pushed me along, kept me going during harder times." Cotton, for granted ere's a basket stuffed full of clothing labels, separated from their garments, that McQueen thinks will end up in her show, perhaps as a handbag. "When you go to the store and buy clothing, you don't think about much other than: Does this look good on me? And how much does it cost? But I've had the extreme pleasure – or horror – of ripping so many garments apart to turn into dyeing supplies for my work, and after so many hundreds of them, you begin to think about people all over the world and what goes into making what we take for granted. It begins with people who cultivate cotton. It's a product of very hard work. And the people who have done that work have some horror stories." McQueen would love for cotton organizations – like the Perry- based Georgia Cotton Commission – to pay attention to what happens when artists get their hands on cotton, and perhaps even offer much-needed financial support for these projects. "Some of the memories associated with cotton need to be replaced with something beautiful, as a tribute to the work our people did, and the way they suffered," she said. 'You've gotta go big' About a year ago, McQueen was surprised to hear from Marvin Holloway, her college beau. It had been 50-odd years since they'd last been in contact, but he was coming through town and hoped to meet up, talk about old times, maybe look at her artwork. She showed him some pieces; he got excited, wanting to see more, more, more. "He said, 'Oh, you've gotta go big!'" McQueen laughed, "and I said, 'Big? How "ONE OF THE NICEST GIFTS I EVER RECEIVED WAS THE OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE THE SUPPORT TO DECIDE WHAT I WANTED MY LIFE'S WORK TO BE." -Wini McQueen

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