BIOGRAPHY
BIOGRAPHY: born in Grand Rapids, Michigan of Southern transient migratory NATIVE-AFRO-EURASIAN AMERICAN ANCESTRY. My interest in creating thins is grounded in my family's history of using their hands to make objects for use and contemplation.
I am the girl with the TETHERED wing, cocooned in stasis waiting on my next transformation and metamorphosis into flight. As the daughter of a crestfallen former professional athlete, architect, tailor and serious renaissance master artist father, and a mother who was an illustrator, seamstress and school teacher. My childhood was divided between the physical labor of learning how to build walls from scratch, working power tools to running track, reading the encyclopedia every summer to imaginative play and creating my own art world.
Growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan had a major influence in grounding my family's history of using their hands to make objects for functional use. There is always elements or should I say remnants of the furniture industry that inspires my mixed-media installation items. These are the type of long lasting cultivated memories of bestowed value on handmade items that were created for both use and contemplation and as the only real reminder of the city I grew up [which was the furniture capitol of the world at one point].
I love making things with my hands and sought out to find a way to do it for a living while surviving with my soul intact and have absolutely no shame in my game. My work is not for the meek or the sweet but it is for those who understand that I am one of the few who chooses to see things that are not apparent and face them head on. Trained in the combat arts as a child I grew to have no fear of adversity - I have been ingrained to look deeper into a persons soul to give them the option to rethink their objectives before embarking on spiritual combat. My work in a lot of ways is how I express the fallen who dared to try and step on those they saw as underdogs.
My art is an OUTLOOK on some of the people-places and things - I have encountered as you will see remnants of all my life influences, experiences bound from all my life travels and the collective stories along the way. I would like to welcome all who visit me here a glance into my continuing narrative series: "The BUTTERFLY MONOLOGUES of A RED NEGRESS; Chosen Vessels of Diasporic Revelations, [the AGONY and the EXSTASY] of a Nomadic Journey of Wanderlust and Self Discovery.
PERSONAL STATEMENT ABOUT MY PROCESS AND THE ART WORKS
Art can serve as a window on the pain of those that are unseen, and thus can hold the promise of moving people to take action. My goal in making any series of work is to show the suffering from many differing viewpoints. I take a highly personal approach to my subjects and tend to focus on the psychological condition people are in as well as the physical, using marks that describe how people feel inside, not just how they appear. express us as true survivors and reveal the tenderness, the courage, and the dignity of human beings living under conditions that few can dare imagine. The subject matter of my work is generally narratives of fragmented human bodies and portraiture with symbolic elements. I work with the human figure out of compulsion and necessity. Stemming from an insatiable curiosity about the actions, motivations, and psychology of those around me, the human figure has always found its way into my art. Being socially reserved by nature, my work becomes a catalyst for me to connect with others ...
ARTISTIC INFLUENCES:
I'm a mixed-media figurative artist .sculptor. painter. writer. printmaker. illustrator. fashion designer. photographer. exhibition specialist . educator. engineer . shamanic spiritual healer. truth is my medicine. But I also have the same genius as Dali, the blood lines of James Baldwin and Edmonia Lewis - am the daughter in the dust of Louise Nevelson - the sister of Frida Khalo - descendant of Elizabeth Catlett . great grand daughter of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller . the niece of Audrey Flack . student of Ruth Duckworth. upholder of Camille Claudel and cousin of Barbara Chase-Riboud. I make beautiful things from clay . new things from discarded goods . permanent things in bronze. translucent colors in glass . paper. metal. bones .leather. wood and what ever else I can find ....trying to listen so they can speak thru me..
INFLUENCES: Works that explore visual narratives of life experiences and the human condition which fits into the categories of Urban Social Commentary, self-portraiture, mythology, Native American, African, Asian and European influences from Art of Antiquity, and indigenous cultures, Surrealism, Symbolic, Art Nouveau and The High Renaissance.
There was a great warrior woman, I met on my journey [while still entrenched in the fashion and beauty industry] Sculptress, Louise Nevelson [1927-1988] who told me to never, ever let anyone say, You don't deserve your space, or your place and use your sex and race against you; In your pursuit of what ever it is you figure out for yourself, because right now your hiding an artist underneath all that fru, fru, fluff, fluff!!! [I would like to say - many have used all 3 to try and stop me Louise but I'm still here the gate keeper of truth and light].
In A Passionate Life, [a biography written by Laurie Lisle 1985] Louise Nevelson made a profound statement of the life of a true artist and survivor against the odds: My theory is that when we come on this earth, many of us are ready-made. Some of us “have genes that are ready for certain performances. Nature gives you these gifts. Theres no denying that Caruso came with a voice, theres no denying Beethoven came with music in his soul. Picasso was drawing like an angel in the crib. You are born with it. I claim for myself I was born this way. From earliest, earliest childhood I feel you are a singer if you have a voice. So I have that blessing, and there was never a time that I questioned it or doubted it. Some people are here on earth and never knew what they wanted. I call them unfinished business. I had a blueprint all my life from childhood and I knew exactly what I demanded of this world. Now, some people may not demand of life as much as I did. But I wanted one thing that I thought belonged to me.I wanted the whole show. For me, that is living. I don't say life was easy. For forty years, I wanted to jump out of windows. But I did feel I had the strength and the creative ability. There was never any doubt about that. No one could move me till I got what I wanted “on my terms, on earth. And I do. And it did take, maybe not the greatest mind, but it did take THE GREATEST courage. And it did take THE GREATEST despair. And the hardship gave me total freedom. Louise Nevelson..... [Your spirit lives on Louise]
MEMORABLE QUOTES BY LOUISE NEVELSON:
"Art was all that mattered to me, at all times, right from the very beginning."
"I wouldn't marry God if he asked me."
"Light and shade are in the universe, but the cube transcends and translates nature into a sculpture; the cube gave me the key to my stability."
"According to metaphysics, thinking is circular. But when you square the circle, then you are in the place of wisdom."
"I didn't sell for practically thirty years. I just felt the public wasn't ready."
"Everytime I put on clothes, I'm creating a picture."
"I always thought, bluntly, that I was a glamorous, goddam exciting woman. I wanted to have a ball on earth."
ELIZABETH CATLETT: The only man a successful female artist should marry is a feminist who believes in two dreams his and hers... AMEN TO THAT!!!
