An artist in Louisville is celebrating some influential mothers.

Say Hi to your mother is an exhibit celebrating the contributions of 30 black female leaders in Louisville.

Artist Jabari Bennett says the project explores and preserves the legacy of the women who helped shape her.

MOORE And tonight's Arts and culture segment we call Tapestry.

It's just mysterious how all those 30 women came to be.

And again, these 30 women represent ancestors upon ancestors who nurtured them.

Numerology is very important in this exhibit.

I celebrated 30 women on the 30th anniversary, on the 30th year that Breonna Taylor.

Right.

Would have been 30.

So there are many, many women who are featured.

I'm not going to list all of them because it is 30 of them.

But you will see Alma, Lucille Allen and other cultural leaders.

Some of them have received awards and celebrations, but some have never received awards and recognition.

But they all speak to each other because they have touched my life significantly.

So I didn't realize till the end of the experience that I have my earliest teachers, my first visual arts teacher and also my first black woman teacher was Wilma Bethel.

She is here.

My first music teacher is Joanna Perkins.

She is here.

She taught me at six, my first dance teacher, which is Paulina Trumbo.

She is here in class.

And some of the women have impacted my life and I didn't even know until later.

It took less than three months to paint 30 portraits.

For some people, that would take years.

But it came through and every single portrait required a different sensibility.

So some of them I will call on their ancestors.

I will have pictures of the ancestors.

I had very intimate model sessions.

I will go to their homes, their art studios, to their favorite places.

So I start out with a well done drawing.

Then I paint over it realistically is when you put collage and you deconstruct.

You show the messiness, the intricacy, the complexity of who we be.

Because that's who we are to the day we die.

So these women on the walls are still learning themselves.

And this is 52, almost 100 year old women.

They are still learning themselves.

And so that's what collage speaks to.

So not look at them as exceptional figures, but look at the network of people who hold on and lay hands on them, which is how I feel.

What you'll find in the show is that each woman, the way they are the title is if their last name and first name.

And as like they're an index of a fictional social studies book.

Somewhere in the future, young lady and our ancestors can literally show us, you know what?

This failed.

You might want to do it differently or this work you might want to do it differently that's culturally responsive to the needs that are there now, Right?

So that that connection, direct connection to our ancestors is one of many, many tools.

But for me is it's a main tool because that's where I feel seen and heard.

The Kentucky Center for African-American Heritage is working on a catalog that lets people learn more about the women featured in the exhibit.