A STITCH IN TIME

Ellen J.Keiter unravels the narrative threads of Denise Allen's rich tapestries

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'She's alive?' a young girl asked me, eyes wide with amazement, as I toured her class of second-graders through Denise Allen's exhibit. 'Yes,' I replied. 'She's alive and well, and living in Queens.' This young visitor's response is one I heard from people of all ages who came to see 'Family Ties: Needlework by Denise Allen,' which was on exhibit at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York, from January 15 to May 9 of last year. Allen's work is so reminiscent of a rural, bygone era that many people believe it was created more than a century ago (and certainly not in a borough of Manhattan!). As a contemporary folk artist, Allen fabricates dolls and needlework tapestries that address her African-American heritage. The history of slavery in the United States is a frequent theme, as are folklore figures and popular-culture icons. Even when treating more recent autobiographical themes, Allen casts her figures in an antiquated light. They wear nineteenth-century dresses, cook on wood-burning stoves, do their washing by hand, and participate in quilting bees. It is women -- strong, brave, nurturing women, the backbone of the American family -- who are the common thread in Allen's work. Her multifaceted works capture a real sense of home -- interiors cluttered with people, pets, furniture, food, family photographs, books, and religious objects. She combines various needlework techniques, such as applique, piecing, and quilting, with actual wicker baskets and kitchen utensils sewn directly on to her tapestries. Her materials include scraps of old clothing, curtains, and blankets, as well as objects she purchases at flea markets. She uses tea to stain fabrics so that they look old and worn. Indeed, she loves anything old-fashioned. Using an antique sewing machine, she makes her own clothing, which she patterns after late nineteenth-century country attire. She dreams of one day moving from her small apartment in Queens to a farmhouse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where she can ride a horse and buggy rather than the subway. Her rich combinations of colors, textures and patterns -- and the contrast between the painted two-dimensional and the sewn three-dimensional elements -- create a visual patchwork in which viewers can discover multiple stories.

In I Remember Brooklyn (1997), Allen pays homage to her childhood in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The large, central panel of this tapestry depicts the interior of the four-story brownstone where she lived with her parents, six sisters, and two brothers. It recalls a day when Allen's mother taught her and her sisters how to sew a patchwork quilt. Evidently, the girls didn't pay much attention, since they are shown sleeping and playing patty-cake instead. Allen's mother worked as a seamstress, but Allen herself didn't take an interest in the art until her mother passed away twenty years ago. She found solace for her grief by teaching herself to sew using an embroidery kit. Trained as a legal secretary, she was employed at a powerhouse law firm where future New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani practiced. Previously, she worked as a legal secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

I Remember Brooklyn also contains a vignette of her mother's tenant, Mrs. Aikens, cooking in her basement apartment (Allen still recalls the wonderful aromas that permeated through the floor). The Ebenezer Methodist Church, shown in the lower left, was the center of Allen's childhood social life. The parishioners -- each an individually created doll -- line the pocket pews as if singing hymns. The Jenkinses, her future husband's family, are represented in the upper right (Allen met her husband Richard when she was just sixteen). The remaining panels depict the surrounding Brooklyn neighborhood of her childhood, such as the playground, the local liquor store, and the auto-body repair shop.

With a whimsical freedom, Allen combines different time periods, mixing both historical and personal events. 'I have so many stories to tell,' she says, and she communicates them with her needle and thread. She never makes preliminary sketches and often doesn't even have a particular theme in mind when she starts a new tapestry. She says the works create themselves. For example, the tapestry Escape from Slavery to an Uneasy Freedom (c.1992) was begun just as another old-fashioned interior scene. She planned to dedicate the work to a friend named Lulu, who had died. (Lulu's portrait still presides over the scene.) As she progressed, however, a story of the Underground Railroad began to emerge. Allen shows Harriet Tubman -- the only figure with a defined face -- leading a group of escaped slaves to a safe house along the Railroad. Because they are in hiding, these women don't have faces. Tubman (c.1820--1913) was born into slavery on a Maryland plantation, and she labored as a field hand and house servant until 1849, when she escaped to freedom in the North. Before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Tubman bravely returned to the South nineteen times to lead other slaves, including her own parents, to freedom. The clandestine route the escaped slaves traveled became known as the Underground Railroad. As the title of this work suggests, freedom wasn't an inherent right for blacks, nor, when granted or won, was it a guarantee of safety or prosperity. 'I read a lot,' says Allen. 'Slavery affected me mentally. I feel bad when I think what some of those slaves had to undergo and how fortunate I am that I wasn't born a slave. I want to give thanks to those slaves who overcame so much, so that I could be free. Allen's women not only cook and care for children; they also risk their lives so that others can be free.

This strong feminine will is brought to life in another tapestry, Aunt Jemima (1998). Aunt Jemima, the fictional character for a food-products company of the same name, is the quintessential 'mammy' -- a derogatory persona invented by whites to represent the black female servant. Exploited in art and Hollywood, she is portrayed as an obese woman with an apron, a red bandana head wrap, and a broad, obsequious smile. First used in 1889 to advertise pancake mix, Aunt Jemima has been a familiar face on breakfast-food packages for more than 100 years. Although images of Aunt Jemima are politically controversial in a highly race-conscious society, Allen believes her work honors Aunt Jemima rather than perpetuating the stereotype. According to the artist, her portrait of Aunt Jemima is large because she is full of love and inner strength in the face of prejudice and oppression. One of Allen's most ambitious works is Polly Balch's Quaker Skhoole [sic] for Needlework 1800 (1996), a six-foot-high wooden dollhouse, chock-full of Allen's figures and handiwork. Constructed by her husband, Richard Allen, it was inspired by Polly Balch, a woman who taught needlework at her home in Providence, Rhode Island, during the late eighteenth century. Although Quakers were zealous opponents of slavery, Balch was neither a Quaker, nor did she instruct blacks how to sew. As in all of her works, Allen combines both real and imaginary figures and events in this piece, seamlessly integrating events in American history with stories of her own life. Included in the dollhouse are modern accessories such as a working nightlight, a childhood photograph of Allen, and an ashtray that has been converted into a spinning wheel.

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