Sewing Peace

Completion: 2019

Location: Durham Police Department Headquarters, Durham, NC

Description: Sewing Peace speaks to the concept of stitching together or healing in the context of the historical tensions that have existed between the police and the African-American communities of Durham. The title of the artwork has a double meaning related to both the spreading or sowing peace and weaving together the community through peace.

In the craft of weaving, the heddle is a threshold that individual strands of fiber must pass through to become part of a larger, beautifully intricate fabric. A heddle is an integral part of a loom. Each thread in the warp passes through a heddle, which is used to separate the warp threads for the passage of the weft. Among hand woven African textiles, single-heddle looms are in wide use among weaving regions of Africa.

For the police, the Oath of Office is, in many ways, is also a threshold that marks the beginning of life as a police officer in a community. In this concept, words of the Oath of Office are each envisioned as a rigid heddle where differently colored linear fibers pass through and converge together as in a piece of fabric. The sculptural “word heddles” are attached to the atrium wall perpendicularly in rows so that the complete Oath of Office is readable and dramatic as one views the wall from below.

From afar and outside the building, this composition of elements evokes a colorful patchwork quilt that becomes a metaphor for Durham as a vibrant multicultural city. Like a composition of intersecting rays of color, the work creates a warm, welcoming experience that has a hand-crafted presence, but also a uniquely contemporary feel.

Design Optimization/Management: Metalab