On Sunday, February 2, over 40 people filtered in and out of the Community Center to create a work of art using nothing but sticks and fermented mud. Artist in Residence Karen Arrington led the traditional mud cloth workshop where participants used six different colors of mud to stencil in everything from bananas to caterpillars or create their own unique design. “It’s not really like painting,” Greenbelter Lois Rosado said, as she pressed a mudcovered stick against the fabric canvas to give her butterfly wings. “You really have to press and pull the mud to get it to stay.” But getting the mud on the fabric, being careful not to mix the mud in its jar, is not the only step in this Bogolanfini tradition of Mali. After the first coat is applied, Arrington said that drying, rinsing, reapplying and repeating are absolutely essential to the process. Hair dryers were plugged in at stations around the room for people to dry their work after each coat, of which there were two or three. Rinsing stations were also available for attendees to first wash away any excess mud that did not dry, and then apply washes that would alter the colors of the cloth the piece was made on. Because all of the washes were made using a variety of fruits, each rinsing station smelled like a different kind of marmalade. “It’s very fun!” Sally Gilbert, a resident of University Park, said. “The most difficult part about it is not knowing how it’s going to turn out.” After the rinsing process, some designs lost their precision or bled into different parts of the fabric.
Arrington said it’s an art form that takes a lot of practice. “It’s very labor-intensive and time-consuming,” Arrington said. “The dirt itself takes about three to six months to ferment.” While Karen Arrington has been doing mud cloth artwork for years, she said that her sister, Kathye Arrington, who has over 20 years of experience working with mud cloth, is the real expert. “Whenever [Kathye] travels, she always brings back dirt from other places,” Karen said, laughing. “You have to declare it in customs, of course, but you also have to microwave the dirt to kill any foreign bacteria before using it.” Although dirt from every corner of the world could be used in mud cloth, according to Karen, the dirt that was used on Sunday came from Owego, N.Y., Laurel, Md., and a baseball field in Howard County, Md. Just one of the many activities hosted by the City of Greenbelt to celebrate Black History Month, the free mud cloth workshop attracted many first-time participants. Six-year-old Emelia Loo was all smiles at the event with her friends and family, saying that she’d never painted with mud before. “I liked it,” she said, carefully examining her mud-stained hands as if to explain the cost of her efforts. “But my hands got a little dirty.” Maurice Holden, who’s a junior at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, said that it was also his first time working with mud cloth. “It gives you the chance to make a very creative and clever image , ” Holden said, as he reflected on the ways the art form could “inspire the minds of many.” And inspire the mud cloth workshop did, as attendees left with colorful proof of the practice they’d learned. And, as the event came to a close, Mary Ann Hartnett, a coordinator at the John Hollingsworth Art Gallery, could be heard saying that she had gained a new perspective, too. “Now, when I get a little bit of mud on my clothes in the garden,” Hartnett said, “I’ll think, ‘You know, maybe it’s not such a bad thing.’” (Brogan Gerhart is a University of Maryland journalism student interning with the News Review.)