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A photo of Dr. Kimber Thomas (left), Connecting Communities Digital Initiative (CCDI) senior innovation specialist, moderating a discussion between 2024 CCDI Artists/Scholars in Residence, Maya Freelon (center) and Dr. Allie Martin (right).
Dr. Kimber Thomas (left), Connecting Communities Digital Initiative (CCDI) Senior Innovation Specialist, moderates a discussion between 2024 CCDI Artists/Scholars in Residence, Maya Freelon (center) and Dr. Allie Martin (right). Image Courtesy of Jessica Vanhook.

CCDI Artist/Scholars Highlight Creative Uses of Library Materials at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival

Posted by: Olivia Dorsey

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The Library shared the innovative work of its Of the People (OTP) program at the 22nd Annual Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival last month. The Library sponsored the film festival for the second year in a row (supported by the OTP grant from the Mellon Foundation), hosting presentations and highlighting Library resources at the festival’s Vineyard Lounge, an area of the festival that was free and open to the public.

The first event featured a conversation between Dr. Kimber Thomas, Connecting Communities Digital Initiative (CCDI) senior innovation specialist, and CCDI’s 2024 Artists/Scholars in Residence, Maya Freelon and Dr. Allie Martin.

A photo of a sign highlighting the Of the People program at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival.
A sign highlighting the Of the People program at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival (MVAAFF). Image Courtesy of Michelle Minor.

Maya Freelon is an award-winning visual artist known for her unique tissue paper art, which allows her to visualize the transience and vulnerability of emotions. Her project, Whippersnappers: Recapturing, Reviewing, and Reimagining the Lives of Enslaved Children in the United States, uses archival photographs from the Library’s digital collections to create new artwork celebrating Black children in America.

On the left is an image of a young girl posing next to a chair and on the right is an image of Maya Freelon's artwork, "Complex," which uses the photograph to create a tissue ink monoprint art piece.
Left: [Unidentified young African American girl in dress with hat on chair] (Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs/Library of Congress). Right: Complex, 24”x40”, Tissue Ink Monoprint and Archival Print, 2024. Maya Freelon.

“I want you to see that face, I want you to see those eyes, that innocence, that beauty.” – Maya Freelon, 2024 CCDI Artist/Scholar in Residence

For her project, Maya said that she chose images that represented “innocence, beauty, light and love amidst a terrible situation.” She didn’t want to focus on the atrocities that these children experienced, but instead wanted to focus on the innocence of these unnamed children.