JAMAICA'S master quilt maker, Donnette Cooper, joins a circle of celebrated artistes who will be putting on an exhibition of their work to mark the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States of America.

The exhibition, which is dubbed 'Quilts for Obama', opens today at The Historical Society of Washington, DC, and will continue through January 31.

Donnette Cooper's quilt is titled 'America at the Crossroads'.

"It focuses on our perennial challenge to reconcile the competing imperatives of race, gender, religion, class, nationality and sexual identity as we struggle to realise the vision of a more perfect union," said Cooper.

over 60 quilts

The exhibition comprises over 60 interpretative quilts by master quilt-makers to celebrate the inauguration, to welcome the Obama family to Washington, and to celebrate their roots and history.

There are 44 mainly newly made quilts from across the US, one or more from each of four African countries (Kenya, South Africa, Liberia and Ghana), historical quilts from Hawaii and Kansas and quilts from Georgetown, South Carolina, including one made by Carrie Nelson, the oldest living member of Michelle Obama's family.

A partial list of artists in the show includes Dr Denise Campbell, Sew Chick Elle, Laura Gadson, Peggy Hartwell, Charlene Hughes, Catherine Lamkin, Marlene O'Bryant, Edna Patterson-Petty, Cookie Washington and Trish Williams. Many of the quilt-makers will attend the exhibit opening.

The theme of the journey resonates in many of these celebratory quilts. Carolyn Maloomi's 'Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around' honours those marchers who participated in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights march, which was the summit of the civil rights movement.

On March 7, 1965, as non-violent marchers neared the Edmund Pettus bridge, they were tear-gassed, beaten and their procession stopped by Alabama state troopers. This historic event, known as 'Bloody Sunday', resulted in the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

research associate

Guest curator, Roland L. Freeman, is a folklorist and photo-documenter whose career began during the civil rights movement. For more than 40 years, he has been documenting the continuity of traditional African American cultural practices, and is currently a research associate at the Smithsonian Institute's Centre for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. His own quilt, 'Hand Me Down My Mother's Work', incorporates Dr Ja Jahannes' poem of the same name.

Hand me down my mother's work

In the bright patterns that she made

For she did keep a dream or two

From before she was a slave.

Hand me down my mother's work

And the symbols that she knew

For I must make a patchwork quilt

For all my children too.

Freeman has a special passion for quilts and quilt-makers, and over the past four decades has criss-crossed the US, being the first to document the world of African American quilters, culminating in a national tour and book called Communion of the Spirits, published in 1996. He describes the genesis of this exhibition as follows:

"On November 4, I was glued to the television watching the election returns, as were millions in this country and around the world.

When it was announced that Barack Obama was the president-elect of the United States, my emotions overwhelmed me. I could hardly speak. Then came the amazing images of worldwide jubilation.

Donette Cooper shows off pieces of her exquisite work. - Contributed My mind drifted back to other seminal events that for me were just as emotionally life-changing: my participation in the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, the 1963 March on Washington and Dr King's 'I have a Dream' speech.

In my lifetime, I've known three black men whose messages of peace, love and racial harmony profoundly moved the masses: Martin Luther King, Jr, Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama. King said, "We shall overcome", Nelson Mandela forgave his oppressors, and now Barack Obama has inspired Americans to come together for change for a better tomorrow.

'Ain't Nobody Gonna' by C. Mazloomi

I asked myself what I could do to help celebrate this victory and it occurred to me that a commemorative quilt exhibition was just the thing.

And so it is."

- Contributed