The Queue: Dawn Williams Boyd

What are your go-to tools for working with textiles?

Drawing pads and rolls of drawing and tracing paper, seamstress tracing paper and tracing wheels, pencils, erasers, permanent markers, rulers and junk drawer shapes, scissors and rotary cutters, Wite-Out, camera, scanner, projector, sewing machine, straight and safety pins, iron and ironing board, various kinds of hand needles, Wonder-Under, new and used fabrics, sheets and tablecloths, laces, cotton and wool embroidery flosses, embroidery hoops, thread, cowrie shells, beads, sequins, buttons and other notions, and a professional photographer.

On your website, you mention your involvement with Black visual art collectives. How has belonging to these groups shaped your artistic practice?

Groups encourage artists of varying skills and opportunities to learn from and share with people who “see” through a different lens. They provide a reason to get into or out of your studio. Other artists appreciate the work involved in transforming an idea into reality. Because of these groups I’ve changed subject matter, mediums, and styles, and I’ve learned to use new techniques and tools. I’ve been exposed to contacts and situations that I would not have had alone and pushed to achieve levels I didn’t know existed. Their support and encouragement are the ladder I’ve climbed to reach my goals. 

In “The Scene,” you mention senior centers as a venue for fine art. Can you tell us more about these venues and the artists they exhibit?

You would be shocked at the number of closeted artists who spent 40 years pushing paper in corporate America, dreaming of the day when they’d have the leisure to pull their paints and brushes out into the light. Many have the urge to create and need a little instruction, direction, and encouragement. These centers provide these would-be artists with talented teachers—often accomplished artists in their own right—and the opportunity to exhibit their skills to their peers and the public. Fulton County Senior Services has a traveling art exhibition each spring to showcase the profusion of high-quality paintings, quilts, sculptures, and jewelry.

Which craft artists, exhibitions, or projects do you think the world should know about, and why?

Upcoming shows at three of my favorite art venues in the Atlanta area:

Black Art in America Gallery:

• Printmakers’ exhibition, August 7–30 
• Color Us Different: A Family of Painters, September 11–October 25
• Jamaal Barber solo exhibition, November 27–December 30

aKAZI.ATL:

• Mozambican sculptor Gonçalo Mabunda in collaboration with Emory University’s Carlos Museum, opens in October 
• Selly Raby Kane, opens January 2026

Emma Darnell Aviation Museum and Conference Center:

• Imagenerations, a mixed media solo exhibition by Irvin Wheeler, November 15, 2025–January 16, 2026

Shivaun Watchorn is associate editor of American Craft.