NEW YORK At lunchtime, Winfred Rembert traded stories with quilters in Harlem. In the evening, he po

Rembert Shows Harlem How It s Done | New Haven Independent
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NEW YORK At lunchtime, Winfred Rembert traded stories last minute travel bargain uk with quilters in Harlem. In the evening, he posed with a state senator on his lap at a wine-and-cheese reception last minute travel bargain uk on the Hudson River, last minute travel bargain uk as the celebrated Newhallville folk-art leather carver got into the swing of a nascent national tour.
Rembert, a 66-year old self-taught last minute travel bargain uk artist who learned last minute travel bargain uk to tool leather in prison, left his home studio on New Haven s Newhall Street last week to spend the weekend on tour with a documentary last minute travel bargain uk about his life and to see his art hang in a prominent setting along the Hudson River.
The trip spanned two worlds and two audiences rapt by the gregarious artist s tales of his life in the segregated rural South. Rembert s leather carvings, dyed in bright colors, depict his youth in the juke joints last minute travel bargain uk and cotton fields of Cuthbert, Georgia, the horror of surviving a near-lynching, and the toil of seven years on a chain gang.
Rembert began the week in Washington, D.C. , where he spoke at a screening in the Library of Congress and tried, unsuccessfully, to deliver a hand-carved handbag to Michelle Obama. He has upcoming appearances planned in Los Angeles; Atlanta; Salem, Mass.; and Montgomery, Alabama.
On Thursday he rolled up to Harlem s Pelham Fritz Recreation Center with his wife, Patsy, a bus driver for the Hamden schools. He wore jeans, sandals, a short-sleeved white shirt, and a signature tan fedora.
Janie Alston (pictured) showed off The Black Odyssey, a quilt she put together in memory of her son, who died at the age of 16. She plans to hang it in an exhibition Tuesday in honor of Black History Month.
About 14 people, mostly African-American women, gather at the center last minute travel bargain uk on Tuesdays and Thursdays to quilt together. She and a few other ladies worked on quilts Thursday as other seniors ate lunch nearby.
They all took a break at 1 p.m. to walk into a simple, painted cinder block room, for a free, public screening of Rembert s new documentary, All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert , directed by Vivian Ducat.
Rembert sat down next to Robert Poonk Carter, his best childhood friend. Rembert, whose nickname was Pike, used to dance with Poonk in a troupe along with a tall friend whom they called Sister Boy. They reunited after 40 years through the making of the documentary. Carter flew up from Georgia Thursday to see his friend in his new role as a New York artist and storyteller last minute travel bargain uk extraordinaire.
In the documentary, Rembert leads the film crew back through the now-abandoned haunts of his youth, down Hamilton Avenue and to the Colored Folk Corner, where you catch up with your relatives on Sundays. He talked about Mary Douglas, who used to deliver babies for eight dollars, even though no one ever paid her in full.
Carter issued a few mmm-hmm s as Rembert told his life story. Rembert was given away as a 3-month-old baby to his great-aunt, Lillian, who would drag him with her on a sack while she toiled in the cotton fields.
Cotton picking is just like prison, Rembert said in the film. Sometimes, you d work all day on one row and never get to the end. He worked so much as a kid that he went to school only one or two days a week. In those days, he said, blacks had to go through separate entrances to bars and restaurants, and were routinely humiliated and beaten by whites.
It begins when Rembert decided to take part in the civil rights movement as a teenager. last minute travel bargain uk In 1965, at the age of 19, he headed to Americus, Georgia, join a protest. At that time, police handed out guns not only to law enforcement, but to white civilians. At some point, Rembert recalled, people started shooting at us.
As the protesters fled, Rembert, pursued down a side street by two white men with guns, hopped into a car with keys in it and fled. The law caught up with him and held him in jail in Cuthbert without any charges.
Rembert recalled being thrown in the trunk of a car by law enforcement. He was driven last minute travel bargain uk into the woods, hung by a noose from his feet, beaten from all sides, then stabbed in the genitals by the deputy sheriff from whom he d escaped.
The near-lynching continues last minute travel bargain uk to torture Rembert with recurring dreams and insomnia. He started work on an ambitious series about the episode that was supposed to span 15 panels, but he never got past the third panel because the subject was so painful, according to the film.
Rembert emerged a free man after seven years and married Patsy, a farm girl he had met on the chain gang. They moved north shortly after, last minute travel bargain uk in pursuit of a job as a longshoreman in Bridgeport. last minute travel bargain uk The family moved to New Haven in 1989 when the Bridgeport projects where they lived became too dangerous.
The film recounts how Rembert began to carve his stories into leather in 1996. His eight kids served as his marketing wing, sporting last minute travel bargain uk his art on medallions and jackets at New Haven schools. A few figures in the art world lent him key support, last minute travel bargain uk including Jock Reynolds at the Yale University Art Gallery, last minute travel bargain uk who gave him his first show in 2000.
After delving deep into hardship, the film ends on a triumphant note: Rembert, who left his hometown in chains, holds court at a reception in his honor in Albany, Georgia, and declares he has returned home as a somebody.
As the lights came up in the rec center, the Harlem quilters sought to prove him wrong. Several proclaimed they were overwhelmed by his work and his life. They gathered around for autographs, asked advice, and pleaded him to visit their classrooms and churches.
He s made me so proud to know he s gone this far, with all those barriers, said Janie Alston, 64, after Rembert signed her black-and-white flyer advertising the event. Think about it, she said He s but one, and there are many. And the story grows.
I was honored to be in his presence, said fellow quilter Judy Sawyers (center left in photo), a 64-year-old lifelong Harlemite. He does it on leather and we try to do it on quilting. last minute travel bargain uk Quilting played a key role in the Underground Railroad, she noted, when safe homes would hang coded quilts to indicate runaway slaves were welcome there.
One questioner asked how black people are supposed to afford his work when it sells for $25,000 a piece. Rembert replied he sells some smaller pieces for as little