“Yes! A Tribute to Michelle Tooley” by Berea fiber artist Ann Butwell (’87) is on display until April 30 in the Pross Gallery at Union Church. The works in this art exhibit are all about Dr. Michelle Tooley – a beloved Berea College professor who died in 2015 after a two-year struggle with melanoma. The show commemorates Tooley’s life, death, legacy of social justice and her friendship. Tooley taught at Berea College from 2003 to 2015, where she was the Eli Lilly Chair of Religion, Associate Professor of Religion and Chair of the Peace and Social Justice Studies Program. The gallery, located on the lowest level of the modern wing of the building, is open 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. weekdays, Wednesday evenings and Sundays 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
“I like making art about life’s hard moments,” commented Butwell, an alumna of Berea College who works as Education Abroad Advisor there. “I find it healing, and I hope everyone who knew Michelle will, too.” Butwell was one of many who gathered around her friend and “sang her home” when she passed away last May. That deeply moving moment was the inspiration for the body of work Butwell later created.
“Singing Michelle Home,” the signature piece of the exhibition, memorializes that day. The piece begins with Tooley speaking her truth on behalf of justice and ends with her resurrection depicted in the form of an ascending Central American quetzal bird – singing freely again after a long silence. In the space between those two bookends, a choir surrounds her bed in love and song.
Butwell stated that not only did Tooley’s spirit rise from a communal gathering, this body of work was also built in a community of artists. “I found a space to explore this theme in a Fibers class at Berea taught by Lisa Kriner,” Butwell noted. “It was a creative environment that allowed me to [simultaneously] explore my grief and enjoy being a student again.”
Butwell and her husband John Wright Rios lived in El Salvador and know Central America and its issues of oppression and poverty well. She and Dr. Tooley shared a love for the region and an awareness of the role the U.S. government played in the civil wars there, which influenced why she chose to set the scene for her art pieces in Guatemala. The feeling of going to Guatemala is evoked by the quetzal and by the motif of mountains and their deep greens, blues and purples.
The artwork in the show includes a variety of surface design techniques – from batik and silk-screen printing to embroidery and weaving. As Butwell worked she became more and more focused on the brilliantly colored quetzal, a bird that symbolizes the theme of liberation that framed Tooley’s life. “My artistic journey culminated in weaving wearable quetzals, modeled on the form of a traditional Guatemalan tunic known as huipil.”
Butwell remembers that although Dr. Tooley had trouble speaking at different points during her illness, her responses were emphatic and positive. A story shared at Tooley’s memorial service confirmed that this was intentional; at one point in her last months, Tooley told a friend that she pictured herself as a giant florescent-orange “Yes!” – painted like graffiti on a wall.
On her hope for the outcome of the show Butwell commented, “I want Michelle’s optimism and joy to infect all of us so that we might soar to great heights singing a loud, beautiful ‘Yes!’ to life.”