Tangled Threads

Theme:  Identity and Gender

To thread one’s way is defined as: to thread or move through a passage or in-between obstacles. Our ancestors’ values and beliefs are often obstacles that have impacted our identity; the series, Tangled Threads, reveals a visual poetry of connective threads between historic cultures and contemporary women. The paintings juxtapose modern women and symbols of their ancestors’ traditions, values and beliefs. Lott depicts two worlds in a whimsical style with bright colors creating an ironic portrayal of the past and the present.

In the painting, Cotton Threads, the symbolic threads encircling and entangling a contemporary black woman, include the cotton plant, the confederate flag, African textile patterns and yellow ribbons symbolizing and forming the bonds and chains of slavery.

Apron Strings places a contemporary woman in the 1950’s wrapped in her apron strings connected with clothes pins and diaper pins. ‘Tied to the Apron Strings’ was an expression from the early 1800’s attributed to a law that allowed a husband to control his wife’s property during her life time.