Get to know MMA’s 2024 artist-in-residence L’Merchie Frazier as she shares about her work and joins a local quilter Diane Williams in conversation. Frazier is a multidisciplinary artist and educator traversing themes of Black identity in the Americas and beyond. Williams is a traditional quilter and storyteller. In this artist talk, both textile artists will reflect on their relationships to quilting and the themes that show up in Of Salt and Spirit.
About the panelists
L’Merchie Frazier is a multi-media visual activist, historian, educator, and poet whose work reclaims and reimagines the narratives of Black and Indigenous
communities. Through her innovative textiles, she maps spaces of justice, freedom, and equity, using archival materials to create visual stories that confront the legacies of slavery and dislocation. Her art is housed in prestigious collections, including the Smithsonian Institution, the White House, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. She is a Boston Foundation Brother Thomas Fellow (2021) and a 2023 Boston Celtics Heroes Among Us honoree.
Get to know MMA’s 2024 artist-in-residence L’Merchie Frazier as she shares about her work and joins a local quilter Diane Williams in conversation. Frazier is a multidisciplinary artist and educator traversing themes of Black identity in the Americas and beyond. Williams is a traditional quilter and storyteller. In this artist talk, both textile artists will reflect on their relationships to quilting and the themes that show up in Of Salt and Spirit.
Diane Williams introduces herself as a “narratologist’’ – a story weaver who spins tales from history, mythology, and folktales. She explains, “Everything in the world is a story, and there are many ways to tell those stories.”
Diane has a background in traditional quilting, but over the last ten years, she has evolved into the world of mi Ed media fiber art designs. One of her designs has been secured by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History for their archival collection. She is a “Fellow” member of the Craftsmen’s Guild of Mississippi. She often incorporates hand-dyed fabrics, embellishments, and elements such as stone, pine straw, silk yarn, and beads, and repurposed jewelry into her work. Her work is included in museum collections and in the homes of private collectors. Her work has been included in exhibitions in galleries, museums, presented at festivals, and on college campuses. She has conducted fiber arts workshops and has worked with communities to tell their stories in tapestry design that hang today in city halls, county courthouses, etc.
Williams is a published author, poet, professional storyteller, public speaker on the Mississippi Humanities Council’s Speakers Bureau, and recently retired June 2019 as Director of Grants for the Mississippi Arts Commission.
