mobile art gallery at the parks at walter reed

Peace by Piece by Maya Freelon

A large-scale tissue paper sculpture built with the community.

Mobile Art Gallery Attendance Details

• Installation Dates: Saturday, Apr. 9 — Sunday, May 15, 2022

  • Closed Sunday April 17, 2022

• Location: Arts Plaza at The Parks at Walter Reed, 6310 Cameron Drive NW (Get Directions)

• Gallery Hours: Saturdays and Sundays from 12-5p

• Gallery Admission: Free

• Community Workshop Schedule

  • #1: Friday May 13, 5-7pm

  • #2: Saturday May 14, 12-2pm

  • #3: Sunday May 15, 12-2pm

• Community Celebration: Sunday, May 15 from 3-5pm

Join CulturalDC for a family-friendly event, celebrating Freelon's Peace by Piece in the Mobile Art Gallery. All are welcome! Past workshop participants are encouraged to join the community in conversation.

Drinks, popcorn and popsicles from Maracas Ice Pops provided!

Music provided by DJ Jaz Dux. 

Come see how we have worked together to build this amazing installation!

Installation and Artist Information

CulturalDC has commissioned acclaimed visual artist Maya Freelon for an evolving multidisciplinary installation. Freelon creates large-scale, colorful, tissue paper sculptures which are collaged together like a quilt and rooted in family tradition. The kinetic quilts resemble organic shapes which respond to viewers’ movement throughout the space. Peace by Piece is both a work of art and an invitation for viewers to engage with their own history. 

In the Spring, Freelon will create a site-specific installation in CulturalDC’s Mobile Art Gallery, hosted by The Parks at Walter Reed. The sculpture will be collaboratively constructed during a series of workshops with Maya and communities in D.C. Over the course of the exhibition, audiences can witness the art growing and changing as people contribute to the quilt. Later in the year, the living sculpture will become part of an immersive and interactive exhibition featuring music, sound, and touch. The final work will feature a monumental sculpture composed of hundreds of thousands of pieces of tissue paper joined together by hand.

Maya Freelon is an award-winning visual artist whose work was described by the late poet Maya Angelou as "visualizing the truth about the vulnerability and power of the human being." She was selected by Modern Luxury Magazine as Best of the City; by Huffington Post as " Black Artists: 30 Contemporary Art Makers Under 40 You Should Know "; and by Complex Magazine as " 15 Young Black Artists Making Waves in the Art World ." Maya completed residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, the Korobitey Institute in Ghana, and the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia. She earned a BA from Lafayette College and an MFA from the School of Museum of Fine Arts , Boston.

Following the installation in the Mobile Art Gallery, the artworks from Peace by Piece will become an immersive backdrop for a theatrical reading of Toni Morrison’s DESDEMONA presented by IN Series Opera at CulturalDC’s Source Theatre.. Wrapped in the music of Nina Simone, Morrison’s work wrests narrative agency from Shakespeare, and gives it instead to the women of his play: Desdemona and Barbary, the African slave woman who raised her, performed by acclaimed international artist Claron McFadden. The two walk through the afterlife and finally approach understanding. DC jazz artist Janelle Gill leads an ensemble including viola da gamba legend Tina Chancey and Baltimore master African kora player Amadou Kouyate.

Note from the Artist

Peace by Piece is an interactive art exhibition which invites the audience to join artist, Maya Freelon, in a collaborative art making experience. Using simple instructions and wide parameters, participants of various abilities and ages can join together to help create this new work of art. No experience necessary, just an open mind and heart. 

A single scrap of paper alone can seem insignificant, small, unnoticed, or like nothing at all, but when joined together with others there is power, unity, and beauty. If people can come together, with the same materials and help create monumental artwork together, it’s a shared, transformational experience. 

My grandmother used to tell me we came from a family of sharecroppers that never got their fair share. She was born in Texarkana, Texas in 1928 and I was born in Houston, Texas in 1982. We had a sacred bond. She grew up during the Great Depression and knew what it was like to need and not have. As a child, she instilled the value of maximizing the minimal. So I use every element of tissue paper in my artwork. With the bleeding tissue ink I create a process I developed called Tissue Ink Monoprints, the broken pieces get woven back together, into sculptures and the tissue quilts tell the story. 

My grandmother, Queen Mother Frances J. Pierce, was a school teacher and owned a hair salon. She was also dear friends with Dr. Maya Angelou (my godmother and namesake). As a child, I spent summers with my Granny Franny, and she taught me how to make something out of nothing, how to make a way out of no way and how to make quilts, piece by piece. When I attended graduate school at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, I lived with my grandmother and one day was searching her basement for inspiration. Floor to ceiling were filled with items she has been collecting for over 78 years. Confederate money, old Jet and Ebony magazines, cast iron hot combs, books signed by James Baldwin and Alex Haley, a real treasure trove for a found-object sculptor! Then I came across a stack of assorted tissue paper that was folded in half, and tucked between dusty books. In the middle of the paper was a beautiful stain that blended all the colors together. This watermark, what many would call an accident from an old leaking pipe, changed the trajectory of my artist career. When I asked her if I could have the stack of stained tissue paper, of course all my grandmother said was, “Yes, I was saving it for you!” and that moment changed the trajectory of my artistic career. 

I love using accessible materials that are familiar, resourceful and recycled, and elevating them to a place of honor within the white walls of a gallery or museum. Challenging the idea of “high” and “low” art is part of my mission. I love making art that is collaborative and inclusive, as well as transformational and boundary-breaking. 

When I work with the community, tissue paper becomes a way for adults to remember their childhood and for children to explore joy and wonder. When we make something together we are coming to the table at the same level, same ability, without judgment. It’s important for me to start every workshop from a place of equality. Tissue quilts making workshops, similar to quilting bees, often bring up conversations about family, memory, storytelling and exploring creativity. When you sit next to someone who is different from you and you begin to connect your section of the quilt to theirs, you create a bond that is beyond the physical. The combination of working together, strategic planning, excitement and growth, each participant leaves having the shared experience of watching 1 tiny piece of paper grow into a quilt larger than themselves. 

Creating tissue quilts now has even more significance for me than pre-pandemic. We are finally entering spaces and finding new ways to connect. Folks are excited to be out and experiencing the world again in a new, interactive and safe way. 

I just came back from a weeklong residency at the Collegiate School in Richmond, VA, where I conducted tissue quilt workshops with over 500 students, teachers and parent volunteers. The reaction and response from everyone was more enthusiastic and energized than any other workshop I’ve ever taught, and I’ve been working with tissue paper for over 15 years. This was actually my first major residency since the pandemic and what I realized was everybody’s enthusiasm and creative energy  created an environment that was electric. The act of making a tissue quilt together in a space after so much distance and lifted restrictions, allowed for us to come together in a way none of us had ever experienced before. One 5-year-old participant named William told me it was “the best day of his life!” to which I replied, mine too!

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