United We Win! is the title of a colorful narrative quilt about African American workers employed at the Hunters Point Shipyards during World War II and beyond. People who live in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood today collaborated with the artists to make the quilt. The artists also made a coloring book, Hard Hat Heroes, which tells the stories of these workers and the many jobs they performed in shipbuilding and repair. After viewing the quilt in BAMPFA’s galleries with William Rhodes, the lead artist in the quilt project, use a range of drawing and painting materials on a poster-size reproduction of a page from the coloring book to create a mixed-media artwork of your own.

Children who participate at the workshop will get a free copy of the Hard Hat Heroes coloring book to take home.

About William Rhodes

As a former Shipyard Artist-in-Residence and director of the intergenerational art program at Bayview Senior Services, William Rhodes works with seniors to unearth family stories and transform them into art. This collaborative work has resulted in many community history quilts, including a series of Shipyard history quilts that are the basis for the recently published coloring book Hard Hat Heroes. Rhodes studied sculpture and furniture design at the Baltimore School for the Arts and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.