Ellen’s Work Blog
March 2022
After two months dyeing border strips and sewing batik pieces together, I put the last seam in the last of 77 kids’ batiks to complete the Indigo Squares quilt that will hang in the Ramp Gallery at AMP. We did this collaborative project over a weekend in 2004 at the Penn Center on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, with students from four schools in the Lowcountry.
These past eight weeks, I have had plenty of time to think about all those kids, their parents, their teachers, and the artists at Penn Center, to remember Arianne’s batik demo for all of us, Randy’s hand-painted pants, Reverend Small’s quiet comments about the magic of the place, the sunlight in the morning through the hanging kudzu, and the sunset on the screen porch where Martin Luther King wrote his “I Have a Dream” speech. All 123 of us were all there together for three special days—and at last we have this 11x17’ quilt, clear proof it was not a dream.
Now, as we head into March, the excitement builds at AMP. John and Andy are back installing third-floor railings, Adam and Amy are working on finishing last details on the mural building renovation plans, and Herbert’s crew is working on the new kids’ program room upstairs.
