In 2009 Torreah “Cookie” Washington and her mom Martha Moore were at the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. to celebrate one of Cookie’s greatest artistic achievements: her fabric art was part of an
exhibit for Obama’s inauguration. But Ms. Moore was hesitant to enter. “When I was a little girl, we weren’t allowed in that building,” she explained. “We had to go in the back door like the janitors.” The historic significance of the moment was immense for Cookie. “I am a patriot in the purest sense of the word. Every man I have ever loved was in the armed services.” She attended her first protest march as a toddler in a stroller and considers her art her social justice work, her ministry. “I believe in the promise of America and I will work my whole life to see that that promise is kept.”
Cookie’s artistic vision includes fables, myths, and icons that precede enslaved people being brought to the United States. She says she’s a “way-shower”. “You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you came from, even if it’s a fable.” Her needles pluck strong Black women from history: Calafia, the namesake of California who inspired the Conquistador Hernan Cortes, the Black Madonna and Sophia, the Goddess of Wisdom. "She is the one who is with you in your darkest hour…who faces disaster with you and…leads you out.” She learned that since 800 A.D., way before the sanitized Disney version, there were mermaid stories. Black mermaids were powerful punishers and grantors of wishes. She was captivated by the true story of Charleston’s
“Mermaid Riot”. In 1867, 500 people mobbed a store to set a mermaid free. She swam away in a flooded street.
At her current exhibit at
Brookgreen Garden’s Lowcountry Center (on view until Nov. 26) her artistry is striking. These are decidedly not your grandma’s
sunbonnet Sue quilts which she says,” are usually the one your dog ends up giving birth on.” This is fabric art enriched with embellishments: beads, words, feathers, metallic threads…. "I am interested in making art that stirs your soul and makes you think, makes you feel something and makes you exuberantly happy. I am not at all interested in making art that matches your couch.”
Also striking is Cookie’s commentary. Emily Abedon describes Cookie’s art as expressing her personal journey through love, pain, death and rebirth and “a return again and again to a belief that collective human righteousness can create a more just and beautiful world.” A poem Emily wrote "A Piece of Peace", inspired Cookie to stitch a quilt to honor their friendship.
A Piece of Peace by Emily Abedon
I wish I
could do that, you said, give
someone a
piece of not being scared.
Everything
about your wish speaks
For the way you
live your life. Even
The way you
don’t wish to give it all,
just a
piece, speaks for your humility.
You feel a
divine being is the only one
who could contain
all of fearlessness.
I like to
think of that divinity from time
to time, a
holy vessel, the possessor
of the
antidote to life-threatening fear.
I like to
picture the vessel is near me,
not the
hovering metal ship of an alien
looking down
from the sky, but more
like a kidskin
reticule suspended at my hip.
I like to
imagine that I need only reach
deep into my
purse to find the numinous
net that
collects butterflies in the stomach,
It is easily
mine, and that by choice
I don’t,
because I know that being scared
Makes me
human, and that human
Is really
all we’re supposed to be.
That message was like a ray of sun through the fog of fear that had settled around me. Cookies's words followed me into Brookgreen's glorious gardens with a renewed sense of hope. “Through the choppy seas of serious challenges and lessons for me this year, God has allowed my hands and heart to continue to create fiber art…With each stitch, I whisper a prayer of gratitude—for one more day and one more opportunity to give back to my beloved community.”
See her portfolio:
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Beaded detail
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