Divergent Threads, Lucent Memories

Divergent Threads, Lucent Memories is a bold, captivating public artwork for the Gantt Center that captures, celebrates, and shares Charlotte's history and heritage, focusing on the historic Brooklyn community, the cultural, social, and economic center for African-Americans in Charlotte for most of the 20th century. Brooklyn is an especially appropriate subject, because the Gantt Center sits inside the geographic area where Brooklyn once thrived.

The work draws its meaning from the power and importance of quilts in the African American community. Its title speaks to the accumulation of differences between groups, which can lead to the formation of new beginnings. As with fabric quilts that preserved and passed down history within the African American community, the glass wall acknowledges the diffusion of generations of Old Brooklyn that adapted to different environments and produced success over the years. The "threads" are symbolic of the community members – each one different, colorful, and unique while at the same time interwoven to create a patchwork of beauty and diversified meaning. The glass panels serve as the perfect medium to provide a "lucent" connection of the present to the past for passers-by.

David Wilson is from Apex, North Carolina, and creates cutting-edge, architecturally scaled public art. In addition to his public art, Wilson is an accomplished gallery artist and has exhibited his works throughout the United States and abroad in Germany, Spain, and Japan.