Chiquola Mill, Anderson County
South Carolina tartan
Memory and Time: Labor and Cultural History
Fine Arts Collection
U.S. General Services Administration
Memory and Time: Labor and Cultural History celebrates the history of mapmaking and the Upstate region’s rich textile tradition. Joyce Kozloff was inspired by the sixteenth-century Gallery of Maps at the Vatican Papal Palace to create this suite of seventeen ceramic tile and glass mosaic panels. The eight vertical panels on the east and west walls of the lobby feature present-day Google Earth aerial views of textile mills in communities served by the federal courthouse. On top of each map, the artist hand painted a transparent textile pattern that was produced at each mill. The painted textile overlays cover the entirety of the maps, except for the mill buildings, which project outward from the picture plane. Installed directly below the Google Earth aerial views are six historical maps that reference the region’s past from pre-colonial times to the early twentieth century, when Greenville was the “textile capital of the world.” Each historical map is paired with a textile artwork traditionally handmade by women. The maps on the east wall are surrounded by Cherokee basket patterns, whereas the maps on the west wall are combined with nineteenth-century southern quilts.
The lobby’s south wall features the artwork’s centerpiece, the three-panel Google Earth aerial view of the demolished Chiquola Mill. The central panel focuses on the present-day ruins of the mill buildings. The two flanking panels show the neighboring communities and surrounding landscape. The half-moon-shaped ceramic tile map is framed by a blue variation of the Carolina tartan, rendered in glass mosaic. On September 6, 1934, Chiquola Mill was the site of the Bloody Thursday massacre, which claimed the lives of seven people and wounded many, when local militia and police opened fire on picketers. The strike was part of the larger Textile Workers Strike of 1934, which paved the way for fair labor legislation that included the forty-hour workweek, minimum wage requirements, and limits on child labor. The artwork serves as a tribute to those who lost their lives.
