Quilt Square 1935 - 1942

Baye M. Yancey’s “Quilt Square” presents us with a pattern of red, white and blue. It is like a page from a storybook. You can almost see the artist piecing together scraps of fabric, each with its own history and texture. Imagine Yancey selecting these materials, feeling their surfaces, and arranging them just so. I always wonder, what might she have been thinking about as she stitched each piece? What stories do these colors and patterns tell? Look at the way the quilted sections are defined by these white stitches. Each one is a tiny gesture, a mark of her hand. The colors feel deeply rooted in a shared visual language that resonates across time. In my work, I think about how a single brushstroke can change everything. Yancey’s quilt is an act of embodied expression, a testament to the power of simple gestures to create something beautiful and meaningful. It’s like she’s in a conversation with generations of artists.