Design by Dan Hendricksen
This is my story for Session 2 [of the WWHB workshop]. There’s a kind of home structure at the base of the piece, then what I think of as a fluttering, flying figure above. It’s moving to the right side where there is a row of regular checkered blocks.

I can assign my own meanings to these elements, having grown up in Ft. Smith, Arkansas in the 1950’s and 60’s when segregation was very overt and accepted (by those I knew) as the “way things are''. My parents, who were from “the North'', did not agree with this on a cerebral level, but also did not raise a voice in support of the Civil Rights movement of the day. We left Arkansas in 1969, at the height of national unrest, and moved to Indiana. There, I saw essentially the same racist attitudes; just not the same overt, out-front, official condoning of them (but we know now that these submerged attitudes were equally effective at preserving a similar segregation). All of [these experiences] colored my emotional ([and underlying cognitive]) worldview - we are all, at some level, products of our environment.

The symbolism of the flying form (Phoenix?) [is] my proudest achievement: escaping this structure and parenting a daughter who is demonstrably free from that baggage.

- Dan Hendricksen