Exhibition Guide
The Drape Maker
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Art Object Info
A lone woman toils with a heavy foot at the pedal of her sewing machine. Haywood Bill Rivers’ late 1940s work drew on scenes from his childhood depicting Black life in the South. His style was influenced both by European modernism and by American Southern craft. In his youth, he participated in quilt-making, recalling, “We would be working with blocks of color from scraps of rags and clothes.” Rivers’ evident love for patterning is visible here in the woman’s blouse, the drape she sews, the floorboards, and the curtains.
Rivers left his family as a teenager and moved to Baltimore to study at the present-day Maryland Institute College of Art, but he was denied enrollment because of his race. He attended the Arts Students League of New York from 1946 to 1949 and finished his training at the École du Musée du Louvre in Paris, where he later opened a gallery.
The Drape Maker
A lone woman toils with a heavy foot at the pedal of her sewing machine. Haywood Bill Rivers’ late 1940s work drew on scenes from his childhood depicting Black life in the South. His style was influenced both by European modernism and by American Southern craft. In his youth, he participated in quilt-making, recalling, “We would be working with blocks of color from scraps of rags and clothes.” Rivers’ evident love for patterning is visible here in the woman’s blouse, the drape she sews, the floorboards, and the curtains.
Rivers left his family as a teenager and moved to Baltimore to study at the present-day Maryland Institute College of Art, but he was denied enrollment because of his race. He attended the Arts Students League of New York from 1946 to 1949 and finished his training at the École du Musée du Louvre in Paris, where he later opened a gallery.