CAM Look | Laura Wize shares a Poetic Response of All Things in Time by Whitfield Lovell | 5/9/24

Welcome to #CAMLook, your twice-weekly dose of the Cincinnati Art Museum. Every Tuesday and Thursday, a staff member or volunteer will share an object from the collection and pose questions for discussion. Please check back at 10 AM for a new discussion and a new artwork.
Today, Cincinnati Poet, Laura Wize, shares a Poetic Response of All Things in Time by Whitfield Lovell.
Fabric of My Life by Laura Wize
My mother is the descendant of washerwomen
That’s not a metaphor
There is a trail of washing water that puddles from Mississippi to Alabama
Women who washed garments and prayed to be healed from the hem of his garment
My mother their exact reflection
Filled with their fear
Filled with her own
Filled with their wisdom
Filled with her own
She laundered her clothes to keep them looking new
Her eye trained to find quality in piles of discards
My mom hates wrinkles
She steams cotton like she wants it to pay for the pain it caused her ancestors
My mother is the descendant of washerwomen
Keeps stacks of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Women’s Wear Daily
The way she can match fabric, sew seams, adjust hemlines
Must be the revenge of her bloodline who were denied entrance into stores that sold
First hand silk charmeuse and duchess satin
My mother is her ancestors wildest dreams
The way she presses seams nice, flat, and beautiful
Washerwomen who may have never forced a grommet through denim for Levi Straus
Their circumstances may not have given them the foresight
To see past ironing the shirts of rich white men
The starch of oppression kept food on the table and the was enough to be grateful
But my mom envisioned fashion
My mom woke up early on Saturdays
To watch haute couture and study the lines of the seamstresses who didn’t walk the runway
But made the style possible
My mother the descendant of washerwomen
Taught me how to distinguish between a Simplicity or Butterick patterns
My mom taught me the algebra of fashion because
too much piecework multiplied by expensive fabric and divided by her free time
Meant no new dress if the pattern was too ambitious
My mother the descendant of washerwomen
She gave me the education that her lineage taught her
My mother she is the fabric of my life
Whitfield Lovell (American, b. Bronx, NY), All Things in Time, 2001, charcoal and goache on wood, found objects, 81x56 1/2 inches, Cincinnati Art Museum; Phyllis Thayer Purchase Fund, Courtesy of the artist and DC Moore Gallery, New York

[@SoLTheArtist]

This was lovely, great job Laura. "The Fabric of My Life", Golden!