Georgia artist Winnie McQueen is a textile mixed media artist. Rolling out spoke to this artist about her work and the Tubman museum.
Tell us about your artwork.
I am a fabric art designer and I was commissioned to the work you see in the rotunda. The work is made up of 125 pieces. Normally I dye fabric, but for this particular project I had to bring the paintbrushes out and call on some old skills. So these panels and this work is about the people and history of middle Georgia, Macon especially.
Are you from the Macon area?
I grew up in Durham, North Carolina, lived in Washington, D.C., where I went to Howard University. I guess I’m from Macon now, since I’ve been here some 40 years.
How where you approached by the museum to create your pieces?
At first I was commissioned to create a work that featured 99 people who were donors to the museum. I felt that that was actually quite narrow and maybe uninteresting. So I said give me some room to expand and I took the freedom to create my full panels of life [from] antebellum [times] to now.
