Since picking up a crochet hook in the 1980s, Harlem-based fiber artist and cultural activist Xenobia Bailey has created sculptural marvels in the unexpected medium of yarn, moving from works of wearable art to large-scale installations celebrating the uniquely African-American aesthetic of funk. Now her first public-art commission, Funktional Vibrations, is on permanent view at…

On the night of Sept. 10, 2001, in Columbia, Md., middle-school teacher Sarah Clark and her fiancé, John Milton Wesley, discussed places: where they’d hold their impending wedding reception, his next-day meeting to secure locations for the HBO series The Wire and her early-morning flight to a lovely California locale. Nearby, in northern Virginia, Peggie…