Is Like a Day Without Sunshine
This week I delivered a quilt I created a few years ago – “Is Like a Day Without Sunshine” - to an exhibit at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach.
It gave me a chance to look at this quilt closely – which I had not done in a while.
I definitely remember how the work started. It was the windows, which I photographed while out on a bike ride in DeLeon Springs.
And I remembered a great Florida orange discovery from a visit over thirty years ago. A family friend from Detroit visited, and we went to a local U-Pick orange grove to introduce him to a Florida experience. He reached up his hand, grabbed an orange, tugged, and there it was - actually in his hand. He peeled it, ate the fruit, and almost exploded with joy. The sun was on the face of this city dweller, to whom the experience of eating a fresh, actual orange from a tree, with the juice running down his arms as he laughed was like being in another world.
That’s the wonderful purity of Florida oranges.
So here I was, years later, photographing a building-in-ruin. The whole complex, previously used as an orange packing plant, was haunting and complex, in stages of decay. (This Bob White Packing Plant was built in 1921 following a fire that destroyed the previous structure.)
I decided that I did not want the windows to be a metaphor for some other kind of story. I wanted the quilt to commemorate the actual story of this group of buildings and the people who worked there.
I printed background textures from rough grass like what was growing by the windows, and inserted some text about the history of the building and historical photos of it when it was in operation.
And I inserted some of the historical text in the windows too.
The workers who picked the oranges to be processed are the real heart of the story, and I wanted them to be an important part of the composition.
At the same time, the lives and stories of the human orange pickers have faded from our historical knowledge. They are depicted incomplete, and semi-transparent to let the background show through.
Here is the completed quilt.
Many people will remember the Florida Orange Juice slogan made popular in the 1970’s by Anita Bryant, “Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.” I wanted that phrase to be the title. So much irony!
Anita Bryant’s sunny, perky advertising persona was at odds with her affiliation with strong homophobic teaching and anti-gay rights political followers. Now in 2023, homophobia and lashing out at the gay community is once again growing strong in the political landscape of Florida, spearheaded by our current governor.
Beyond that, the history of orange production in Florida is complicated. Families became rich and then lost everything from destructive freezes. The whole landscape of this state has changed as areas once suitable for groves can no longer sustain them. Current orange growers contend with tree greening – a fatal, insect-borne microbial attack.
And the stories of the actual workers, the ones on ladders carrying sacks, are interwoven with Florida’s brutal history of racial inequities to its own black citizens, as well as stories of immigrants who are the backbone of Florida agriculture. (At the same time being the scourge of Florida political leaders.)
The fruit is wonderful. The juice is sweet.
But the stories are complicated.
My quilt will be part of an exhibit of historical images of Volusia County in the Echo Gallery, a gallery that rotates works every few months, in addition to the permanent collection in the Ocean Center. I look forward to seeing it there with other works, and to seeing all the stories that are told.
. . . .
One more artmaking thought. (Can’t help it. I’m on a writing roll today.)
Inspiration from a photograph can go different ways. In the quilt I’ve been describing, the windows became a vehicle to describe that particular building. But sometimes It’s completely different.
These windows were discarded and in a corner of my sister’s back yard.
But they did not inspire me to create a work about the building where they had been. Instead, they spoke to me – an immediate, spontaneous response – as a metaphor for things that are overlooked. But very beautiful.
From that inspiration, I created, “Overlooked.”
In the garden, even in her best party dress, this little girl feels abandoned, overlooked. Placing her next to the overlooked windows became a way to create an environment to tell a story.
Like the pure experience of eating an orange from a tree, the inspiration that begins an idea’s journey into a finished work is pure and wonderful.
Actually creating the finished work is where things get complicated!
(You can learn more about “Is Like A Day Without Sunshine” on my website HERE and about “Overlooked” on my website HERE.)
For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating
Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi
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