(NEW YORK CITY) - Before Tabitha Arnold found her own way as an Artist, she tried to Unionize her workplace.

The Tennessee native studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy for Fine Art and after graduating took a job at Green Line Cafe in Philadelphia and honed her artistic work in her free time.  

Over the course of a year, Arnold struggled with her Co-Workers to form a Union.

They finally reached majority support, but only just before the cafe closed at the outset of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Arnold never returned to the cafe, but throughout the Unionization campaign her work - which shifted from painting to tapestry weaving, began to reflect her experience as a Worker and Unionist.  

The campaign changed the way she saw the world and her art, Arnold said in an interview, and she found her Co-Workers and those around her began to respond to the themes of labor and class struggle that the Chattanooga native stitched into her art to comfort herself during the loneliest times of the Unionization Campaign.  

“People around me really responded to this work and it felt like there was a need for contemporary labor art,” Arnold said. "I really got started with becoming myself as an Artist because I was a Labor Organizer.” 

This month, three of Arnold’s recent towering tapestries are on display inside the Field Projects Gallery in Chelsea.

Gospel of the Working Class, curated by Jacob Rhodes, runs through October 4th during the height of gallery season. 

The three works: I Walk, Mill Town and These Hands picture, respectively, a 1918 Chattanooga Trolley Carmen's Strike, a 1934 Textile Workers Strike and the Unionization of a Volkswagen Plant with the United Auto Workers in Chattanooga last year.

The works - each of which took Arnold more than 200 hours to create - are a homage to Chattanooga’s workers, the Artist said, and weave together contemporary and historic labor battles in her hometown. 

To Continue Reading This Labor News Report, Go To: Art for labor's sake: Union organizer's tapestries depict workers' struggles - The Chief