Lake City’s ArtFields helps bring S.C. stories to national stage in Washington, D.C.

LAKE CITY, S.C. (WPDE) — A community art project with roots in Florence County is now on display on one of the nation’s biggest cultural stages.

ArtFields, the nationally recognized art festival based in Lake City, was selected as South Carolina’s official host for the National Scrollathon, a collaborative artmaking project that brings together people from across the country to share their stories through fabric scrolls.

The project is now being unveiled at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., giving Lake City and the Pee Dee region a place in a nationwide artistic celebration.

Created by brothers and artists Steven and William Ladd, Scrollathon invites participants to design personal fabric scrolls that reflect their experiences, hopes and dreams.

The individual pieces are then combined into a larger work of art that represents communities from across the United States.

Earlier this year, dozens of residents in Lake City participated in the project through an initiative called “Tied Together,” creating scrolls that shared their personal stories and connections to their community.

Carla Angus, an ArtFields consultant, said the project’s impact comes from bringing people together through creativity and storytelling.

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“Everyone who was invited receives these strips of material and fabric, and they select their colors, they select what they want to put together and they create a story behind their scroll,” Angus said. “That’s what’s so powerful about the project because it brings all these different people together with different backgrounds and different experiences.”

In addition to Lake City, Scrollathon events were held at other South Carolina cultural institutions, including the Gibbes Museum of Art and the International African American Museum.

Now, those local contributions are part of a much larger display.

More than 250,000 participants from all 50 states and U.S. territories contributed to the National Scrollathon.

The collection is being showcased at the Kennedy Center, where visitors can experience what organizers describe as a visual representation of the American story.

For Angus, seeing scrolls created in Lake City displayed alongside contributions from across the country is a proud moment.

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“When I look at those scrolls, I know those are thousands upon thousands of individuals that have shared their stories,” Angus said. “Now they have become one unified piece of artwork.”

Angus described the experience as surreal and said it demonstrates how art can connect people regardless of where they come from.

“It’s almost surreal because what we want to do is connect people through the arts,” Angus said. “To be a part of something that is so large, bringing so many states together, it shows how powerful art can be.”

The National Scrollathon will remain on display through Labor Day as part of the Kennedy Center’s yearlong celebration of America’s 250th anniversary and the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

For Lake City and Florence County residents, the exhibit represents an opportunity to see their stories become part of a national conversation, one scroll at a time.