20 x 15 in. 

Artist Print

Amazing Grace

Materials: Graphite drawn portraits, vintage lace, and feed sacks, patchwork quilt, embroidery thread

Jason Wolf the owner of Brooklyn Collective and gallerist Hannah Blanton of SOZO Gallery suggested I set up an art studio in the Grace AME Zion Church.  This is when I began to research the church.  The Grace Church is in the historic Brooklyn community in Charlotte, NC.  The first emancipated slaves from South Carolina moved to this area in the 1860s.  Today there are only three remaining buildings of Brooklyn left standing.  The Grace church is one of the buildings.

As a little, girl my family would always talk about a great cousin that died in the pulpit.  I discovered that it was my great cousin Israel Jackson who died from a heart attack in the pulpit at the historic Grace church in 1941.

I am a mixed media fiber artist.  I choose to express myself through quilts because of their symbolic dimensions and implied spiritual connection between the seen and unseen.  My process consists of vintage fabrics that I pair with graphite portrait drawings, embroidery, machine, hand pieced quilting and transferred images. 

My Concepts and inspirations derive from books, vintage family photographs and ancestral research.  My quilt “Amazing Grace” was inspired by my great cousin Israel Jackson.  Today, I have an art studio set up in the very sanctuary where my great cousin preached for two years before his death.

Beverly Y. Smith