Born and raised in North Carolina, artist Precious D. Lovell has long rooted her creative practice in both the Southern stitching traditions she learned from her ancestral mothers and the global textile traditions that she has researched in her travels around the world. In 2024, as the Weatherspoon began plans to present Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South, on view February 7–August 1, the museum invited Lovell to create a response to that show.
The resulting work, Harriet’s Powers, is a multi-sensory site-specific installation that commemorates the work and life of the 19th-century Black quiltmaker Harriet Powers (1837–1910), the woman often referred to as the mother of African American quilting. Combining artist-stitched elements, sculpture, and collected historical artifacts, the work is, in Lovell’s words, “an altar-totem-tree of life for Powers and for all Black female quilters.” Using carefully selected images, objects, and symbols, she situates Powers’s life within African American history and the ways in which Black women across time have created and continue to create lives for their families, their communities, and themselves. Lovell acknowledges injustice, recognizes resilience, and celebrates hope. The often communal nature of quiltmaking is also expressed audibly through a collaged soundscape for the work that evokes the conversations and music that so often enliven Black quilting bees.
As a project, Harriet’s Powers has embodied collaboration. Lovell’s research began with a visit to see Of Salt and Spirit at the Mississippi Museum of Art and to talk with its curator, Dr. Sharbreon Plummer, and a number of the quilters. Back in North Carolina, Lovell worked in her Raleigh studio and spent several days on campus with UNCG students from Consumer Apparel and Retail Studies to sew the large circles, known as “yo-yos,” in the artwork’s buntings. She also partnered with Grammy-nominated musician and sound designer Bill Toles to arrange and record the installation’s soundscape with students from UNCG’s Pop Tech program in the School of Music.
A special thanks to the following faculty and student collaborators:
Janinah Burnett, Assistant Professor of Commercial Voice, and Pop Tech students Chris Hendrix, Kyelle Leonard, Chianne Spencer, Sarah St. Clair, Chandlar Walton, and Jasmine Woodard.
Melanie Carrico, Associate Professor in the Department of Consumer, Apparel, and Retail Studies (CARS), and CARS students Janiyah Bryan, Breana Connelly, Jada Moody, Kamron Ray, and Gabrielle Wilson.