[gentle music]
- Michael Cummings: I thought, "What can I do in my quilts
"to show my excitement
about our first African-American president?"
I incorporated both sides of his history.
So I have African fabric, I have Hawaiian fabric.
I surrounded his image on the quilt with safety pins,
so as to protect him.
And then I put keys for knowledge to open the doors.
A lot of symbols there.
The Brooklyn Museum has one,
and also the Textile Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska has one.
My name is Michael Arthur Cummings,
and we are in New York City.
The section of Manhattan that I live in
is called Sugar Hill,
which is a very famous historical location.
There were a lot of African-American performers,
artists, celebrities, and professional doctors and lawyers
that lived, and still do live, in this area.
[gentle music]
I don't draw or do advanced sketching.
I just visualize the images.
I don't use a ruler or measurements that much either.
I just go down on the floor with chalk,
start drawing the forms in proportion
to what I feel will work, and then pin it down and sew.
This is a quilt of James Baldwin,
and I was really trying to accomplish
his signature hairstyle or the peak that he had in his hair.
Like a palette of paint, I have a palette of fabric.
Now I'm thinking about the balance of the colors,
the tension, what kind of like, speaks out too much
or too little, and then try to bring
all that in my head onto the surface of the quilt.
I do large work because I have a large floor space,
but I never see them vertical or on a wall
until they're finally finished.
Until that time, everything is looked down on
because I'm working on the floor.
My quilts fit into that
African-American quilt making tradition
in that I'm incorporating history and mythology
into these narrative quilts that I'm doing.
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I do reach back to Africa
and I introduced the slave connection there,
and that for me, was an extension
of trying to tell the story of the African-American history.
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- C. Daniel Dawson: If you're looking
at African-American quilts,
they're basically a kind of pieced quilt too,
but for the most part, they don't become geometric.
That's based on African idea of textiles.
The use of the narratives using a quilt
as a the storyteller is also an important African element.
The whole idea of celebrating the culture
that came out of the slave ships,
the whole idea of celebrating Southern culture,
Michael's work is talking about the beauty
of African-American life,
the beauty of African-American culture,
and the strength and dedication of African-American history.
- Michael: It wasn't until I moved to New York City
where they have this rich history of African-Americans,
it led me down the journey of discovering artists
because growing up in LA, I wanted to be an artist,
but there was no information about Black artists
or any sort of creativity or anything.
Growing up, I was very sickly.
I was asthmatic and I was in and out of the hospital
up until about 12 years old.
That led me to be by myself a lot.
It kind of allowed my mind to drift
into an imaginary sort of world where I could draw.
There was a school trip we had to a museum
and they had van Gogh's Sunflowers on display.
And that sealed the deal.
I mean, I wanted to paint and be like that artist.
My parents wanted me to go down the road
of being in business.
When I told my parents I didn't want
to be a business major any longer,
my stepfather painted this really bleak picture of me,
starving with no food, a cold apartment.
He said, "Do you want that?"
And I said, "Yes."
- John: Isn't it great?
I really love these houses.
- Michael: Right, and just the all-around look
that they have here.
- Yeah, they call it Sylvan Terrace
and they're all wood-frame houses,
which is unusual to still be existing in New York.
[gentle music]
- Michael: So what's the age of this house about?
- John: This is pre-Revolutionary War,
so maybe the 1750s, 1760s.
And it was Washington's headquarters.
So during the Revolutionary War, you get a sense even here,
the heights were above the Harlem River.
- Michael: Yeah, you can actually see
the Bronx right now even.
When I really set my mind to be an artist,
I didn't want to fall in that trap
that my stepfather had set.
So I just automatically thought that I would be doing
a 9-to-5 to pay for living here in the city.
- Michael had a double life,
but he didn't feel that stopped him from being an artist.
That you can be an artist because that's your intention.
You can be an artist because everything you do makes art.
- This is African art that I've collected over the years
and on the wall, there's an abstract quilt composition
that I just had fun creating.
This is a collection of prints by various artists
that have influenced me.
And the centerpiece is one by Romare Bearden.
He invited me to look through his portfolio
to pick out anything I want,
and I came across this print called Quilting Time .
And I said, "This, I have to have!"
I came to New York with the idea that I wanted to be a painter.
I discovered Romare Bearden and he became a role model.
His collage work was a narrative.
It tells stories about people and history.
I thought, "Oh, this is a very interesting way
to tell a story."
And I drifted away from painting into collage work.
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I was working for the Department of Cultural Affairs
in New York City.
We had this event where the families were invited
to bring their children so they could make a banner.
I thought it would be a fun idea.
So I took some scraps home.
I just kind of made a fantasy image
and I called it Mother Earth .
I said, "Oh, this looks like something
"I would have collaged
or something I would almost have painted."
And I said, "Here it is, fabric!"
I started experimenting with more materials,
buttons and beads.
And then I started integrating silks and linens
and mixed cottons and different types of prints.
And then my themes changed to more narrative,
historical connections with people and places and events.
[gentle music]
- C. Daniel: The Schomburg Collection might be
one of the most important collections in the world
for the study of African culture.
Arturo Schomburg made it his mission collecting works
and books on African culture and on African people,
and the history and legacy of African people.
He was actually activated by someone who told him
that Afro-Caribbeans had no legacy, had no history.
And so he spent his life putting it all together.
- Tammi Lawson: Arturo Schomburg's collection
was acquired by the New York Public Library in 1926.
It was 10,000 pieces.
We now have a collection of over 20 million items
and five different special collections.
- I've hardly ever stepped on this area.
- Right, this is the Cosmogram.
Langston Hughes is buried right in the middle there.
The intersections between Mr. Schomburg's life
and Langston Hughes' lives
are what these arrows and things are.
And then you have the actual "Rivers" poem all around.
- Amazing. - Yeah.
The Art and Artifacts Division collects anything visual
that documents the Black diaspora.
We have fine art.
We have African art.
We have material culture items and ephemeral items.
Michael's quilts of urban quilts, contemporary quilts,
and we have a quilt by him called Springtime in Memphis
in the collection.
- It's a series of four quilts that I created
after I took a trip down to Memphis, Tennessee.
I have an African print of a person riding an animal.
I kind of look at it as a horse.
And some people said, "Michael, that's you on the horse,
"you're the traveler going through this new environment
that you've never experienced before."
I do series because I want to explore the subject matter.
I want to see what I could develop from that first
to wherever the end would be.
The longest series I made, or the largest,
is the African Jazz .
There was 12 quilts in one year.
Every 30 days, I had to start a new one.
I was just possessed.
I had to do it.
The last large piece I did by hand was four by six feet.
And after I finished, I took a deep breath and I said,
"Michael, if you're going to continue working with fabric,
you have to learn how to operate a sewing machine."
So I went to Macy's
'cause that was the only place I knew where to go.
And they maybe had one salesperson.
She pointed out this sewing machine
and she said it could be delivered.
And I said, "Okay."
I use a zigzag stitch to attach my fabric
to the foundation, and I use contrasting color
so it gives it a dimensional quality to some degree.
The sewing machine has never given me trouble.
I call it my dance partner because it knows all my moves.
[gentle music] [sewing machine whirring]
Some quilter in Texas was asked,
"How do you know when the quilt is finished?"
And she said very matter-of-factly,
"Well, when it tells me."
So when I have that last piece of fabric in my hand,
and I might not find any place for it to go,
and then I realize the quilt's saying,
"Okay, you're finished, I'm complete."
So I step back and I put that little piece of fabric
back in the box for the next time.
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