When they're looking at my work, they're looking at a painting and they're able to accept it better because it is also a quilt.

Because the mask is your face, the face is a mask, so I'm thinking of the face as a mask because of the way I see faces is coming from an African vision of the mask which is the thing that we carry around with us, it is our presentation, it's our front, it's our face.

Creativity helps us realize that we don't have to understand everything. We can enjoy something -feel it and use it- without ever fully comprehending it.

No other creative field is as closed to those who are not white and male as is the visual arts. After I decided to be an artist, the first thing that I had to believe was that I, a black woman, could penetrate the art scene, and that, further, I could do so without sacrificing one iota of my blackness or my femaleness or my humanity.

I guess I had fun doing it but it has hard memories for me.

I became a feminist because I wanted to help my daughters, other women and myself aspire to something more than a place behind a good man.

When they're looking at my work, they're looking at a painting and they're able to accept it better because it is also a quilt.