Ivory Simone's Blog
August 17, 2011
Living In The Shadow Of A Black Housemaid: A Different View of “The Help”
My maternal grandmother, great-grandmother and great-Aunt worked as domestics for white families in the South. My grandmother or “Big Mama” as she insisted we call her cleaned houses the old-fashioned way—on her hands and knees. In fact, I think about Big Mama whenever I see my knees. I now have dark patches of skin on them, age-related hyper-pigmentation. My grandmother’s knees were dark, almost blue-black in color, for a different reason. Her discolored knees were a visible reminder of the years she spent scrubbing and cleaning other people’s homes.
Although I never met any of “her people”, the term Big Mama used when referring to the white families she worked for, I heard stories about them over the years. One of her favorite people was a gay lawyer named “Rico”. I remember her complaining loudly about the lavish parties he threw because the house would be left in shambles. She’d fuss and fume about having to work hard to get the house clean again but Rico always paid her well for the effort. More importantly, he treated her well. My grandmother was more than his housekeeper she was a friend and confidante.
Rico, like many gay men in the 60’s and 70’s, concealed his homosexuality from the public. My grandmother, a Baptist minister’s daughter and a pillar of her church, surprisingly, had no qualms about his lifestyle. She accepted Rico for who he was and they forged a life-long friendship. She worked for him until she retired.
My great-grandmother and my great-Aunt also worked as domestics. I smile remembering with fondness how few people could “squeeze a dollar bill” tighter than my great-grandmother and great-Aunt. Over the years they saved enough money from their earnings as housemaids to purchase a spacious, brick house in a middle-class neighborhood with green, manicured lawns proudly maintained by the hard-working black families who lived there.
Every summer my parents sent my sisters and I “down-south” to live with “Mommy”, my great-grandmother, and my childless, great-Aunt “Gert”. These larger-than-life women were the center of my world. They constructed a “bubble of blackness” that my sisters and I lived in. A safe, secure world Mommy, Aunt Gert and other members of our extended family strove to preserve. Looking back, I realize the color line between black and white Americans was so intractable during the 1960’s, especially in the south, that our lives rarely intersected. As evidence of this fact I offer the following observation, I have no childhood memory of a single white person being part of my life before the age of 7 when my family moved into a predominantly white housing development.
The only time I remember venturing outside of the “bubble of blackness” I inhabited when I lived with them was the day I accompanied my Aunt Gert to work. My Aunt had made a doctor’s appointment at a clinic for me for some reason or another and decided it was far too impractical to come across town to pick me up after work and then travel back across town to see the doctor—so she helped me get dressed and I tagged along with her when she went to work.
We traveled by bus to a different part of town and got off at a stop in a neighborhood similar to the one where Mommy and Aunt Gert lived but not as nice. The houses were smaller and the yards were not as green or as well-manicured. We walked a block or two before my Aunt stopped in front of a gray house with a large front yard. She held my hand as she walked up to the front door and knocked on it.
A young, white woman opened the door, greeted my Aunt with a friendly smile and ushered us into the house.
“This is my niece,” Aunt Gert said nervously, “we got to see the doctor so I brung her to work with me.”
“Hello,” the woman said, “what’s your name.”
I told her my name and squeezed my Aunt’s hand. We both stood quietly in the sparsely furnished living room while the woman gave recited a list of cleaning chores she wanted my Aunt to complete. Aunt Gert acknowledged she understood what the woman was saying by occasionally interjecting, “Yes’m”. With her instructions finished, the woman took me by the hand.
“We’ll let your Aunt work while you play,” she said.
She led me to a covered porch at back of the house where a little girl was playing by herself. I don’t remember the girl’s name but I recall we became instant friends. We played together for over an hour. A couple of times I caught a glimpse of my Aunt walking through the house doing her cleaning chores. For a while the woman sat outside on the porch watching us play then she went into the kitchen to prepare lunch.
By the time lunch was ready, Aunt Gert had finished her chores so the woman paid her and we left.
After all these years, I still remember the events of that day because it was the first time I recall being in the presence of ordinary white people (as opposed to nurses or doctors) for an extended period of time.
Watching the trailer for the movie “The Help” made me think about my great-grandmother, great-Aunt and Big Mama. I don’t think the white women they worked for thought of them as friends. They viewed them as servants. Except for the day I went to work with my Aunt Gert, I never played with or became friends with the children of the families who employed them. As black Americans in the 1960’s we lived separate lives in separate worlds- one black and one white.
I suppose the problem I have with the film is that it presents a relationship between white women and their black housemaids that’s not rooted in reality. The truth is white women helped to maintain the color line as vigilantly as white men did. They directly benefited from the social and economic system that relegated black Americans to second-class citizenship in the country of their birth. It was ordinary black women like the ones depicted in the movie, the ones who understood what Fannie Lou Hammer meant when she said, “I’m tired of being tired”—that stood up and fought against the malignant racism of America. They did it without the help of white women—guiding, supporting, leading or otherwise taking charge of their struggle for equality and justice.
I grew up in the shadows of black housemaids who labored and toiled for white families in the South. “The Help” is not movie about them or their lives. It’s just another example of Hollywood co-opting the black struggle for civil and human rights to sell movie tickets.
Although I never met any of “her people”, the term Big Mama used when referring to the white families she worked for, I heard stories about them over the years. One of her favorite people was a gay lawyer named “Rico”. I remember her complaining loudly about the lavish parties he threw because the house would be left in shambles. She’d fuss and fume about having to work hard to get the house clean again but Rico always paid her well for the effort. More importantly, he treated her well. My grandmother was more than his housekeeper she was a friend and confidante.
Rico, like many gay men in the 60’s and 70’s, concealed his homosexuality from the public. My grandmother, a Baptist minister’s daughter and a pillar of her church, surprisingly, had no qualms about his lifestyle. She accepted Rico for who he was and they forged a life-long friendship. She worked for him until she retired.
My great-grandmother and my great-Aunt also worked as domestics. I smile remembering with fondness how few people could “squeeze a dollar bill” tighter than my great-grandmother and great-Aunt. Over the years they saved enough money from their earnings as housemaids to purchase a spacious, brick house in a middle-class neighborhood with green, manicured lawns proudly maintained by the hard-working black families who lived there.
Every summer my parents sent my sisters and I “down-south” to live with “Mommy”, my great-grandmother, and my childless, great-Aunt “Gert”. These larger-than-life women were the center of my world. They constructed a “bubble of blackness” that my sisters and I lived in. A safe, secure world Mommy, Aunt Gert and other members of our extended family strove to preserve. Looking back, I realize the color line between black and white Americans was so intractable during the 1960’s, especially in the south, that our lives rarely intersected. As evidence of this fact I offer the following observation, I have no childhood memory of a single white person being part of my life before the age of 7 when my family moved into a predominantly white housing development.
The only time I remember venturing outside of the “bubble of blackness” I inhabited when I lived with them was the day I accompanied my Aunt Gert to work. My Aunt had made a doctor’s appointment at a clinic for me for some reason or another and decided it was far too impractical to come across town to pick me up after work and then travel back across town to see the doctor—so she helped me get dressed and I tagged along with her when she went to work.
We traveled by bus to a different part of town and got off at a stop in a neighborhood similar to the one where Mommy and Aunt Gert lived but not as nice. The houses were smaller and the yards were not as green or as well-manicured. We walked a block or two before my Aunt stopped in front of a gray house with a large front yard. She held my hand as she walked up to the front door and knocked on it.
A young, white woman opened the door, greeted my Aunt with a friendly smile and ushered us into the house.
“This is my niece,” Aunt Gert said nervously, “we got to see the doctor so I brung her to work with me.”
“Hello,” the woman said, “what’s your name.”
I told her my name and squeezed my Aunt’s hand. We both stood quietly in the sparsely furnished living room while the woman gave recited a list of cleaning chores she wanted my Aunt to complete. Aunt Gert acknowledged she understood what the woman was saying by occasionally interjecting, “Yes’m”. With her instructions finished, the woman took me by the hand.
“We’ll let your Aunt work while you play,” she said.
She led me to a covered porch at back of the house where a little girl was playing by herself. I don’t remember the girl’s name but I recall we became instant friends. We played together for over an hour. A couple of times I caught a glimpse of my Aunt walking through the house doing her cleaning chores. For a while the woman sat outside on the porch watching us play then she went into the kitchen to prepare lunch.
By the time lunch was ready, Aunt Gert had finished her chores so the woman paid her and we left.
After all these years, I still remember the events of that day because it was the first time I recall being in the presence of ordinary white people (as opposed to nurses or doctors) for an extended period of time.
Watching the trailer for the movie “The Help” made me think about my great-grandmother, great-Aunt and Big Mama. I don’t think the white women they worked for thought of them as friends. They viewed them as servants. Except for the day I went to work with my Aunt Gert, I never played with or became friends with the children of the families who employed them. As black Americans in the 1960’s we lived separate lives in separate worlds- one black and one white.
I suppose the problem I have with the film is that it presents a relationship between white women and their black housemaids that’s not rooted in reality. The truth is white women helped to maintain the color line as vigilantly as white men did. They directly benefited from the social and economic system that relegated black Americans to second-class citizenship in the country of their birth. It was ordinary black women like the ones depicted in the movie, the ones who understood what Fannie Lou Hammer meant when she said, “I’m tired of being tired”—that stood up and fought against the malignant racism of America. They did it without the help of white women—guiding, supporting, leading or otherwise taking charge of their struggle for equality and justice.
I grew up in the shadows of black housemaids who labored and toiled for white families in the South. “The Help” is not movie about them or their lives. It’s just another example of Hollywood co-opting the black struggle for civil and human rights to sell movie tickets.
Living In The Shadow Of A Black Housemaid: A Different View of “The Help”
My maternal grandmother, great-grandmother and great-Aunt worked as domestics for white families in the South. My grandmother or “Big Mama” as she insisted we call her cleaned houses the old-fashioned way—on her hands and knees. In fact, I think about Big Mama whenever I see my knees. I now have dark patches of skin on them, age-related hyper-pigmentation. My grandmother’s knees were dark, almost blue-black in color, for a different reason. Her discolored knees were a visible reminder of the years she spent scrubbing and cleaning other people’s homes.
Although I never met any of “her people”, the term Big Mama used when referring to the white families she worked for, I heard stories about them over the years. One of her favorite people was a gay lawyer named “Rico”. I remember her complaining loudly about the lavish parties he threw because the house would be left in shambles. She’d fuss and fume about having to work hard to get the house clean again but Rico always paid her well for the effort. More importantly, he treated her well. My grandmother was more than his housekeeper she was a friend and confidante.
Rico, like many gay men in the 60’s and 70’s, concealed his homosexuality from the public. My grandmother, a Baptist minister’s daughter and a pillar of her church, surprisingly, had no qualms about his lifestyle. She accepted Rico for who he was and they forged a life-long friendship. She worked for him until she retired.
My great-grandmother and my great-Aunt also worked as domestics. I smile remembering with fondness how few people could “squeeze a dollar bill” tighter than my great-grandmother and great-Aunt. Over the years they saved enough money from their earnings as housemaids to purchase a spacious, brick house in a middle-class neighborhood with green, manicured lawns proudly maintained by the hard-working black families who lived there.
Every summer my parents sent my sisters and I “down-south” to live with “Mommy”, my great-grandmother, and my childless, great-Aunt “Gert”. These larger-than-life women were the center of my world. They constructed a “bubble of blackness” that my sisters and I lived in. A safe, secure world Mommy, Aunt Gert and other members of our extended family strove to preserve. Looking back, I realize the color line between black and white Americans was so intractable during the 1960’s, especially in the south, that our lives rarely intersected. As evidence of this fact I offer the following observation, I have no childhood memory of a single white person being part of my life before the age of 7 when my family moved into a predominantly white housing development.
The only time I remember venturing outside of the “bubble of blackness” I inhabited when I lived with them was the day I accompanied my Aunt Gert to work. My Aunt had made a doctor’s appointment at a clinic for me for some reason or another and decided it was far too impractical to come across town to pick me up after work and then travel back across town to see the doctor—so she helped me get dressed and I tagged along with her when she went to work.
We traveled by bus to a different part of town and got off at a stop in a neighborhood similar to the one where Mommy and Aunt Gert lived but not as nice. The houses were smaller and the yards were not as green or as well-manicured. We walked a block or two before my Aunt stopped in front of a gray house with a large front yard. She held my hand as she walked up to the front door and knocked on it.
A young, white woman opened the door, greeted my Aunt with a friendly smile and ushered us into the house.
“This is my niece,” Aunt Gert said nervously, “we got to see the doctor so I brung her to work with me.”
“Hello,” the woman said, “what’s your name.”
I told her my name and squeezed my Aunt’s hand. We both stood quietly in the sparsely furnished living room while the woman gave recited a list of cleaning chores she wanted my Aunt to complete. Aunt Gert acknowledged she understood what the woman was saying by occasionally interjecting, “Yes’m”. With her instructions finished, the woman took me by the hand.
“We’ll let your Aunt work while you play,” she said.
She led me to a covered porch at back of the house where a little girl was playing by herself. I don’t remember the girl’s name but I recall we became instant friends. We played together for over an hour. A couple of times I caught a glimpse of my Aunt walking through the house doing her cleaning chores. For a while the woman sat outside on the porch watching us play then she went into the kitchen to prepare lunch.
By the time lunch was ready, Aunt Gert had finished her chores so the woman paid her and we left.
After all these years, I still remember the events of that day because it was the first time I recall being in the presence of ordinary white people (as opposed to nurses or doctors) for an extended period of time.
Watching the trailer for the movie “The Help” made me think about my great-grandmother, great-Aunt and Big Mama. I don’t think the white women they worked for thought of them as friends. They viewed them as servants. Except for the day I went to work with my Aunt Gert, I never played with or became friends with the children of the families who employed them. As black Americans in the 1960’s we lived separate lives in separate worlds- one black and one white.
I suppose the problem I have with the film is that it presents a relationship between white women and their black housemaids that’s not rooted in reality. The truth is white women helped to maintain the color line as vigilantly as white men did. They directly benefited from the social and economic system that relegated black Americans to second-class citizenship in the country of their birth. It was ordinary black women like the ones depicted in the movie, the ones who understood what Fannie Lou Hammer meant when she said, “I’m tired of being tired”—that stood up and fought against the malignant racism of America. They did it without the help of white women—guiding, supporting, leading or otherwise taking charge of their struggle for equality and justice.
I grew up in the shadows of black housemaids who labored and toiled for white families in the South. “The Help” is not movie about them or their lives. It’s just another example of Hollywood co-opting the black struggle for civil and human rights to sell movie tickets.
Although I never met any of “her people”, the term Big Mama used when referring to the white families she worked for, I heard stories about them over the years. One of her favorite people was a gay lawyer named “Rico”. I remember her complaining loudly about the lavish parties he threw because the house would be left in shambles. She’d fuss and fume about having to work hard to get the house clean again but Rico always paid her well for the effort. More importantly, he treated her well. My grandmother was more than his housekeeper she was a friend and confidante.
Rico, like many gay men in the 60’s and 70’s, concealed his homosexuality from the public. My grandmother, a Baptist minister’s daughter and a pillar of her church, surprisingly, had no qualms about his lifestyle. She accepted Rico for who he was and they forged a life-long friendship. She worked for him until she retired.
My great-grandmother and my great-Aunt also worked as domestics. I smile remembering with fondness how few people could “squeeze a dollar bill” tighter than my great-grandmother and great-Aunt. Over the years they saved enough money from their earnings as housemaids to purchase a spacious, brick house in a middle-class neighborhood with green, manicured lawns proudly maintained by the hard-working black families who lived there.
Every summer my parents sent my sisters and I “down-south” to live with “Mommy”, my great-grandmother, and my childless, great-Aunt “Gert”. These larger-than-life women were the center of my world. They constructed a “bubble of blackness” that my sisters and I lived in. A safe, secure world Mommy, Aunt Gert and other members of our extended family strove to preserve. Looking back, I realize the color line between black and white Americans was so intractable during the 1960’s, especially in the south, that our lives rarely intersected. As evidence of this fact I offer the following observation, I have no childhood memory of a single white person being part of my life before the age of 7 when my family moved into a predominantly white housing development.
The only time I remember venturing outside of the “bubble of blackness” I inhabited when I lived with them was the day I accompanied my Aunt Gert to work. My Aunt had made a doctor’s appointment at a clinic for me for some reason or another and decided it was far too impractical to come across town to pick me up after work and then travel back across town to see the doctor—so she helped me get dressed and I tagged along with her when she went to work.
We traveled by bus to a different part of town and got off at a stop in a neighborhood similar to the one where Mommy and Aunt Gert lived but not as nice. The houses were smaller and the yards were not as green or as well-manicured. We walked a block or two before my Aunt stopped in front of a gray house with a large front yard. She held my hand as she walked up to the front door and knocked on it.
A young, white woman opened the door, greeted my Aunt with a friendly smile and ushered us into the house.
“This is my niece,” Aunt Gert said nervously, “we got to see the doctor so I brung her to work with me.”
“Hello,” the woman said, “what’s your name.”
I told her my name and squeezed my Aunt’s hand. We both stood quietly in the sparsely furnished living room while the woman gave recited a list of cleaning chores she wanted my Aunt to complete. Aunt Gert acknowledged she understood what the woman was saying by occasionally interjecting, “Yes’m”. With her instructions finished, the woman took me by the hand.
“We’ll let your Aunt work while you play,” she said.
She led me to a covered porch at back of the house where a little girl was playing by herself. I don’t remember the girl’s name but I recall we became instant friends. We played together for over an hour. A couple of times I caught a glimpse of my Aunt walking through the house doing her cleaning chores. For a while the woman sat outside on the porch watching us play then she went into the kitchen to prepare lunch.
By the time lunch was ready, Aunt Gert had finished her chores so the woman paid her and we left.
After all these years, I still remember the events of that day because it was the first time I recall being in the presence of ordinary white people (as opposed to nurses or doctors) for an extended period of time.
Watching the trailer for the movie “The Help” made me think about my great-grandmother, great-Aunt and Big Mama. I don’t think the white women they worked for thought of them as friends. They viewed them as servants. Except for the day I went to work with my Aunt Gert, I never played with or became friends with the children of the families who employed them. As black Americans in the 1960’s we lived separate lives in separate worlds- one black and one white.
I suppose the problem I have with the film is that it presents a relationship between white women and their black housemaids that’s not rooted in reality. The truth is white women helped to maintain the color line as vigilantly as white men did. They directly benefited from the social and economic system that relegated black Americans to second-class citizenship in the country of their birth. It was ordinary black women like the ones depicted in the movie, the ones who understood what Fannie Lou Hammer meant when she said, “I’m tired of being tired”—that stood up and fought against the malignant racism of America. They did it without the help of white women—guiding, supporting, leading or otherwise taking charge of their struggle for equality and justice.
I grew up in the shadows of black housemaids who labored and toiled for white families in the South. “The Help” is not movie about them or their lives. It’s just another example of Hollywood co-opting the black struggle for civil and human rights to sell movie tickets.
March 14, 2011
Walking Out Your Faith: Making God The Project Manager
March is Women’s History Month. It’s a great time for women everywhere to take stock of their lives; remembering the sacrifices made by our mothers and grandmothers while being mindful of our obligation to continue fighting to improve the status of women. For me, this also means reflecting on the progress I’ve made fulfilling a promise to build a house for an impoverished family. Although the location of the house build was initially “up in the air”, I’ve decided to focus my efforts on helping a family in Haiti (preferably one headed by a single female) because it’s a place where people desperately need concrete proof that love and hope will ultimately prevail over despair and heartache. I’m convinced it’ll be the efforts of brothers helping brothers and sisters helping sisters in a human chain of compassion and charity that’ll turn things around and Haiti. If a single woman like me can muster the resources to build a house for a family in Haiti, surely other people can do the same.
I’m a woman on a mission and I’m inspired by the accomplishments of other women, especially women of faith.
Faith looms large as a motivating factor in this undertaking. I believe each of us has the power to command a mountain to move and it’ll move if our faith is strong enough. It was an act of faith that led me to publicly declare my intention to build a house for a poor family at a time when my own financial circumstances were compromised. Although, I admit my notion of being financially compromised is the product of an American upbringing where possession of things and high paying jobs are measures of your success. The falseness of this standard is evident everywhere in Thailand where people lead full and satisfying lives on far less money than I earn.
Freeing myself from the bondage of this success model has been difficult but necessary because I used it to undermine my confidence and self-esteem. I would quietly tell myself, “You’re the wrong person for this project ‘cause you don’t have your stuff together enough” while thinking about the old adage “charity begins at home”. I’d imagine my family saying, “Hey, take care of yourself first before your try to help someone else.” Only after I started to acknowledge I was taking care of “myself” adequately, as part of an exercise in positive self-talk and attitude readjustment, did this tape stop playing in my head.
I began to understand that fulfilling my promise wasn’t going to be the biggest challenge, overcoming self-doubt and negative thinking would be.
Since launching the OneWoman/OneHouse Project, I’ve found myself on many occasions struggling to move the project forward, mired in self-doubt and feeling sorta “dumb”. I’ve always prided myself on being a creative thinker but my inability to put together a workable plan, at least one that satisfied my ego, frustrated me to no end. I’d throw up my hands and brood over my seeming inability to get things done. Then something fascinating happened. I learned how to wait on God.
This was not a conscious choice. It was a gradual realization that solutions to my concerns about this project seemed to become manifest over time. Consequently, when I couldn’t find an answer to a pressing problem instead of stressing over it, I’d accept the fact I didn’t know the answer and turn my attention to other things. Eventually, an answer to the problem would come to me but not on my timetable! Slowly but surely, I begin to consciously turn this project over to God fully believing he is the great way maker and ultimate problem-solver. What I can’t do, I trust him to do for me.
The centerpiece of my fundraising efforts for the OneWoman/OneHouse Project is the “The Atlas and His Wife” sculpture. An original work brought to life through a creative collaboration between Mr. Gavin Fifield, a renowned international master sculptor, and me. The sculpture has finally reached the stage where it’s ready to be sent for casting. If you haven’t already viewed the photographs or video of the final Marquette (model) of “Atlas and His Wife”, take time to do so. The finished wax model embodies the spirit of hope and triumph over adversity that I want people to associate with the OneWoman/OneHouse Project. Atlas is depicted not as a Titan bearing earth as a heavy burden but as a mortal man bearing his pregnant wife, Earth. Her swollen belly symbolizes hope that is born only after agonizing labor. Atlas and his wife are loving partners, their hands entwined, laboring together to bring forth that hope. The sculpture will be cast in bronze and a limited number will be sold to support the OneWoman/OneHouse Haitian Project.
I’m working on the details of the art fundraiser now and I’ll be posting them soon. If you’re interested in pre-ordering one of the limited edition bronze casts of “Atlas and His Wife”, you can contact me at the OneWoman/OneHouse website:
http://www.onewomanonehouse.com .
There is still much work to be done on this project but I’ve learned to let go and let God take the lead.
I’m a woman on a mission and I’m inspired by the accomplishments of other women, especially women of faith.
Faith looms large as a motivating factor in this undertaking. I believe each of us has the power to command a mountain to move and it’ll move if our faith is strong enough. It was an act of faith that led me to publicly declare my intention to build a house for a poor family at a time when my own financial circumstances were compromised. Although, I admit my notion of being financially compromised is the product of an American upbringing where possession of things and high paying jobs are measures of your success. The falseness of this standard is evident everywhere in Thailand where people lead full and satisfying lives on far less money than I earn.
Freeing myself from the bondage of this success model has been difficult but necessary because I used it to undermine my confidence and self-esteem. I would quietly tell myself, “You’re the wrong person for this project ‘cause you don’t have your stuff together enough” while thinking about the old adage “charity begins at home”. I’d imagine my family saying, “Hey, take care of yourself first before your try to help someone else.” Only after I started to acknowledge I was taking care of “myself” adequately, as part of an exercise in positive self-talk and attitude readjustment, did this tape stop playing in my head.
I began to understand that fulfilling my promise wasn’t going to be the biggest challenge, overcoming self-doubt and negative thinking would be.
Since launching the OneWoman/OneHouse Project, I’ve found myself on many occasions struggling to move the project forward, mired in self-doubt and feeling sorta “dumb”. I’ve always prided myself on being a creative thinker but my inability to put together a workable plan, at least one that satisfied my ego, frustrated me to no end. I’d throw up my hands and brood over my seeming inability to get things done. Then something fascinating happened. I learned how to wait on God.
This was not a conscious choice. It was a gradual realization that solutions to my concerns about this project seemed to become manifest over time. Consequently, when I couldn’t find an answer to a pressing problem instead of stressing over it, I’d accept the fact I didn’t know the answer and turn my attention to other things. Eventually, an answer to the problem would come to me but not on my timetable! Slowly but surely, I begin to consciously turn this project over to God fully believing he is the great way maker and ultimate problem-solver. What I can’t do, I trust him to do for me.
The centerpiece of my fundraising efforts for the OneWoman/OneHouse Project is the “The Atlas and His Wife” sculpture. An original work brought to life through a creative collaboration between Mr. Gavin Fifield, a renowned international master sculptor, and me. The sculpture has finally reached the stage where it’s ready to be sent for casting. If you haven’t already viewed the photographs or video of the final Marquette (model) of “Atlas and His Wife”, take time to do so. The finished wax model embodies the spirit of hope and triumph over adversity that I want people to associate with the OneWoman/OneHouse Project. Atlas is depicted not as a Titan bearing earth as a heavy burden but as a mortal man bearing his pregnant wife, Earth. Her swollen belly symbolizes hope that is born only after agonizing labor. Atlas and his wife are loving partners, their hands entwined, laboring together to bring forth that hope. The sculpture will be cast in bronze and a limited number will be sold to support the OneWoman/OneHouse Haitian Project.
I’m working on the details of the art fundraiser now and I’ll be posting them soon. If you’re interested in pre-ordering one of the limited edition bronze casts of “Atlas and His Wife”, you can contact me at the OneWoman/OneHouse website:
http://www.onewomanonehouse.com .
There is still much work to be done on this project but I’ve learned to let go and let God take the lead.
