STILL DREAMING

Why did people risk their lives to be served by those who didn't want to serve them? Why do we still chase seats at tables that were never built for us?

The front renders Dr. King not at the podium but near the end — disturbed, in deep thought, sitting with a doubt he is reported to have voiced late in his life. The back carries the house itself, burning.

"I fear I may have integrated my people into a burning house." Attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The question the artwork asks is whether integration, for all it won, cost the Black community the institutions it had built for itself — the businesses, the schools, the farms, the culture held in its own hands.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he wasn't. You be the judge.

This piece is a work of graphic design rather than illustration, and the discipline is the point. Every decision is deliberate — the image and how it was graded, the typography set in letterspaced capitals so the words are read slowly, the restraint in leaving the lower half of the garment empty. Your edition number is set into the composition beneath the quote, not printed on a tag. Composed and designed by Tree, pressed to order by hand. The design and the press are the same pair of hands. No fulfillment house has ever touched this garment.