A beautiful piece of collaborative artwork that exemplifies unity has been on display this summer at the gallery of the Overture Center for the Arts called “Threading Through Us,” featuring the work of Janine Bessenecker, Dr. Eugenia Sherman Brown, Bobbette Rose, Cynthia Reynolds, and Dr. Fabu Phillis Carter.
This unique project is part of the Overture Center’s Summer Exhibition Gallery and explores the power of voice and how our lives and relationships are like threads.
“It was important to us during this time, when there’s so much disunity and chaos, that we five, some of us knew each other and some of us who didn’t, came together for this project,” Carter tells Madison365. “We really bonded and established relationships over the two years we worked together on ‘Threading Through Us.’ Now that it is done, it looks like one big piece, but it’s actually individual pieces, and then my words are threaded through it in different ways by the artists.”
Dr. Carter, a poet, columnist, storyteller, educator and the City of Madison’s former poet laureate who writes under the professional name of Fabu, contributed original poetry inspired by the group’s shared theme and creative journey. Carter’s poem runs underneath the artwork. The other artists who have worked on the piece with Fabu include Brown (mosaic), Rose (ecaustic), Bessenecker (watercolors), and Reynolds (fabric)
“What we’re trying to say is we can all be unique individuals and still be unified … be one human family understanding that we are connected, and it doesn’t take away the uniqueness of each person,” Carter says.
Over the course of two years, these five artists came together to reflect on how everybody’s lives and relationships resemble threads — sometimes tangled, often beautiful, and always connected.
“When it was going up, I never realized it would be as beautiful as it is. It’s full of color. Some people said it looks like an ocean to them. Other people said it looks like ribbons to them. Other people said it looks like threads to them,” Carter says. “But the idea is that we can be unique individuals and still move together and still see each other as family and know each other as neighbors.”
“Threading Through Us,” on display in the first-floor gallery of the Overture for the Arts in downtown Madison, will be on view until August 23. One wall on the left side of the room features the collaborative piece, and the opposite wall showcases the artists’ personal pieces.
All five women were connected to the project as women of faith, Carter says.
“We had many things that connected us. We’re women, we’re artists, and we’re all women of faith, and I definitely feel like that went into the love that comes out of the piece,” Carter says. “Each person did their own thing. They contributed. That’s what makes it, to me, so extraordinary.”
The unity aspect of “Threading Through Us” was especially important to Carter.
“I think we were all trying to think of what we can do to resist the evil of our times, resist seeing people snatched and hurt, resist some of the bad things we see going on in our country right now,” Carter says. “For us, being able to do this piece to talk about how we can be individuals, but still altogether, was important. And we needed something to do to show that we oppose all the chaos and unkindness and evil that is currently happening. This is the opposite of what has been going on — this is all about unity and love and beauty.
“More than ever, unity is really needed right now,” she adds.
The Overture Center for the Arts, 211 State St., is open daily Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
“Photos don’t do it justice. It’s magnificent. You have to come see it,” Carter says.
