Artist's Statement

3:00am.  I’m reading a book on writing about one’s art and now I’m propelled to write about the series of quilts based on Toni Morrison’s novels.  It hit me some weeks ago while I was sketching the design for Song of Solomon that I had been wrestling with narration of the books (Narrative Quilts is not something I associate with my own work) versus my emotional and cognitive responses to them.  It is the latter that I’m trying to capture; it is the latter that keeps me re-reading her novels. 

By focusing on my emotional and cognitive responses, I will in turn, create more authentic pieces and maintain artistic integrity.  It was a wa-la! moment for me and I could breath.  Why on earth would I attempt a narrative in visual form behind Morrison, the Divine Queen Narrator? 

I have 3 sketches, 1 for The Bluest Eye, 1 for Sula, and 1 for Song of Solomon.  I’ve started on the study for Sula because it is the one that is most rooted in my own emotional imagery.  I’m digging what I’ve done with the other 2, but I’m believing they require something more before I transfer them in cloth.

The book I’m reading is Art-Write: The Writing Guide for Visual Artists. It was the prompt question “How did you make this?” that started my wheels to churning to the point that I rose up and came to the computer to write this post.  The detailed answer to this question would vary depending on each quilt. I love the freedom in creating art quilts; the freedom in the variety of processes to explore. The finished piece is quilt as metaphor and symbol. The quilt as documentation of my living: breathe, thought, soul. 

It took me 45 minutes to write this.  I'm heading back to bead to sleep.  Peace.

Artists Statements for our joint exhbit (click on page tab above for details)

Ronald “Upfromsumdirt” Davis

Digital Collage is my primary medium but I also do illustrations and paintings.  I start with hand drawings using a digital tablet and found images that are further manipulated in digital software.  My work has appeared in galleries, museums, coffee houses and juke joints in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. In 2009 I was a Kentucky Al Smith grant award winner.  As a creative person, I am inspired to create a visual fantasy that expresses an African American narrative and mythology.  I call what I do Abstrack Africana, a fluid aesthetic where technology, science, history, mythology and art merge and co-mingle. 

I gain inspiration from everywhere. However, music and the written word have the greatest influences on me.  Sun Ra, Chinua Achebe and George Clinton have inspired my artistic work just as much as Pedro Bell, Romare Bearden and Emory Douglas.  I hear a riff by Charles Mingus and I ask myself, “How can I make that into art?  How can I reshape the images generated by it into poetic verse?”  This is my obsession.

Additionally, I am the art and poetry editor for Mythium Literary Journal (http://mythiumlitmag.com/) and co-owner of Wild Fig Bookstore in Lexington, Kentucky.

 Karen “Karoda” Davis

With the soul of a poet, I create mixed media art quilts that are heavily process oriented.  Starting with white cloth that receives color via dyes/paints and according to the visual idea, the cloth will undergo various surface design treatments, such as, screen printing, wax resist, stamping, over-dyeing and/or hand writing. The designed cloth then in turn becomes raw material for whole cloth or pieced quilts that receive stitching, embroidery and/or hand beading.  The finished pieces are for hanging or framing.  I am just as comfortable in a hardware store and grocery store and waste can, as I am in a fabric store when scouring for studio materials.

I am mostly interested in the processes of creating as a way to explore my sense of freedom and limitations and as a way to connect to a larger sense of community. Chitlin’ Circuit is the name of my studio.  It is located in the Mellwood Art and Entertainment Center.  My blog, http://chiltincircuitstudio.blogspot.com, is one of the earliest known blogs documenting processes and ideas by an African American art quilter as referenced in This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers Bible Quilts and Other Pieces by Kyra Hicks.

Showing work alongside Upfromsumdirt, my brother, has been a dream of mind since I began my visual art journey in 2004.  We are both products of Louisville’s public schools and the West End of Louisville.

We hope you enjoy the mix of art produced by both our hands.

What I'm doing with this one precious life.

 144:2 (in progress)

Tomorrow is photographing day.  I have 2 pieces I'm going to submit to Form Not Function (deadline is this Saturday, the picture above is not one of them, just thought I needed a photograph in the post).  Even though these 2 pieces are complete I still find myself talking to them in a way that deepens my understanding of what I was attempting to do and weighing if I succeeded...success is defined as full excavation (thanks to Grace for using this word yesterday...a light bulb went off for me) of an idea and my emotional response to it while in the process.  Here is a sample of some of the questions I ask:

• Did I short change my thoughts and emotions by not full pushing the technique to communicate them back to me? 


• Was/is there a better approach that would have expressed myself better?


• What ideas and emotions and associated images did I discard and keep and why?


• What works? What doesn't? and why?

I cannot get away from describing what I do as "abstracting emotion".  For myself, it is of no value to me for a viewer to understand or relate to the idea/and emotions that I abstracted while planning and creating a quilt.  I want viewers to walk into a piece on their own terms...if they like it, I love it; if they love it; then I've found a member of my tribe.  Somewhere on line I came across an artist (can't remember who it was) whose statement was "if you like, then it is art; if  you don't, then it is not".  For me this is a more open and honest approach...I'm free to do what I need to do and stay in my head, heart, and soul while putting a quilt together and the viewer gets to relate to the piece and me on their terms as well.  Win-win.  Kinda.  Because then from there I go into thinking about culture and gender and myself as an artist and weighing if I've challenged in someway either myself or others to ask questions or perceive ideas differently.  Most of the time I try to provide "hints" in the title, but that is the writer in me, and do the words become an extension of the visual image? 

I become more philosophical when I'm charged with writing an artist statement...I'll settle my mind after the weekend but then I have 2 other deadlines next month ;)

Peace,

Unity in Schisms (what the what am I talking about now?!)

 The Beauty of Holiness Studio, my art making sanctuary

Odd, ... I cannot recall ever being this excited about Mondays when I was employed.  Sundays now are a signal to re-engage fully as possible with my creative mind.  Sundays are filled with thinking about the different pieces of cloth and quilts in their variuos stage of development and what needs to be stitched and the hows and wheres of it all. 

Last week I dye painted over previously painted cloth.  The cloth was not treated with soda ash and I used Afterfix on it which is used to set dye.  I've used this before and was fairly pleased with it...the colours appear to me more muted and toned down then with soda soaked fabric.  I keep returning to this method because I do anticipate, possibly, at some point I may not be able to physically handle low-water immersion dyeing.  This is the piece I'll rinse out tomorrow if all goes as planned:

 
Over the weekend I attended a state meeting of SDA members that Jennifer Reiss and Mary Nehring coordinate.  This was the 2nd meeting but my first.  My membership in SDA has lapsed but renewing it is on my goal list for the coming year.  Being around other artists and diverse minds gets me spinning like a whirling dervish and I left there thinking that its not so much the lack of opportunity that seems to describe this city/state (although the description can be dead on) it is the fact that I cannot attend to all the possibilities. 

In my own art I can say that I now have a focus, sense of purpose, and a vision...a "Karoda" way of working...but I'm also fertil that when I see the art of others my mind automatically begins to push, combine, play, stretch, mix, mingle, and so on, ideas and what ifs and I'm flying or whirling and it feels fun in the moment.  I've learned to reel myself back down...took me a couple of years but I'm good to go and can now say to myself "okay, Karen, settle yourself down".  I think many artists experience this and in turn are faced with juggling the solitude activities with communal activities and how both impact creativity. 

I also attended the tenants' meeting at Mellwood last week and Planet Janet and I will be coordinating demos and activities by the tenants who want to participate in November's Trolley Hop.  Studio spaces are getting new tenants and I hope this is some indication that economically people are feeling more daring and confident.  Many of the new tenants seem to be more retail/service oriented.  A fitness center, photographers, martial arts, florists, etc.  I hope this will not eventually increase the dirt cheap rents for the artists like myself who are solely using the space to create in, but overall, it is good to see fresh eager faces and more activity.

Speaking of solitude and communal, I figured out why I'm not partial to listening to music on an iPod.  I like my music to fill not just me but the space I inhabit.  I want the essence of the sound to rock the cobweb in the corner of the ceiling...I want the vocals to ooze down the walls...I want the rhythms to cover the floor.  This just doesn't happen using an iPod.  I can listen to podcasts on my iPod, no problem...but the music is too big to fully enjoy it that way...and I'm not talking about the volume of the music but the experience of it...listening on an iPod diminshes the experience of the music, the artistry that went into it.  Playing a cd is much more inviting for a shared experience and much more open experience.  I mean would you rather go to a museum or look at the art on a toy view finder?

Peace,

 

 

 

Chitlins', Art and Holiness

Yesterday I had to absolutely go into the studio...although I was there last Friday, it had been 3 whole days without being able to be there or in the basement workshop.  The longer I'm away, the more sullen and surly I become and then I am pressed to summon up energy in surpressing those feelings and behaviors in order to maintain some appearance of civility and sanity.  When ideas are calling me I see stitching, design, quilt possibilities EVERYWHERE...on buildings, dashboards, road construction, billboards, etc, and getting back into my space becomes a near obsessive CALLING.  After I left there yesterday to return back into the world, I felt like the best of me again and welcoming to interact with other human beings again. 

I worked on one of the studies I mentioned in a previous post.  A study that now has a specific vision.  A couple of years ago I was enamored with making silk paper.  Some time last year I started stiching on it just to see how it takes the needle and thread.  I've shown snippets of this particular piece before.  It keeps intriguing me but yesterday I knew the piece had found it's voice and I was listening.  This piece was talking to me..."order the stitches a little bit more Karen", "redo that line of stitches", "repeat the shape below", "take it down further"...and then from my own voice a phrase from one of my poems came to me while stitching and I knew it was the title of the piece...PRIMORDIAL WOMB.   When I picked this piece back up a few weeks ago I was working with the title of Amoeba and I thought the stitching would be a combination of hand and machine.  But yesterday Primordial Womb said all hand stitching and I chuckled at the idea of me doing "slow cloth".

While winding down I pondered what I was experiencing...a conversation, a dialogue, with something I was creating, something that many may view as an inanimate object.  From there I was led to how some cultures hold views that everything has spirit and everything is connected and when we, as artists, enter that realm and practice this belief, are we not entering Holy space?  Estella, my sisterfriend, wrote "poets mostly talk to God..."  I've read on blogs of visual artists and in conversations with artist-friends who speak of being in "the zone".  Personally, for myself, that zone is a communion with God and my time in the processes of creating art is an offering, an invitation for God to enter.  Even when I'm piddling (its a matter of showing up), even when things aren't working out (its an effort in maintaining belief), even when I'm doubting myself as an artist (its the questioning that leads to answers), even when my well seems dry and cracked (its the silence and space I need at that time for something fresh to enter). 

I was thinking of changing the name of my studio to "The Chitllin' Circuit" which I think is brilliant on lots of levels.  First, the space is housed in what use to be Mellwood Meat Packing, later Fischer's Meat Packing...the hogs where actually slaughtered there and the building is just a spit-throw's distance from the neighborhood known as Butchertown where historically, slaughter houses where located (they are all gone except for one).  When my children where younger and we would pull up behind a 18-wheeler of live cows (usually on Sunday evenings the trucks would begin lining up to unload) and the eyes of the cows could be seen peeking out from the holes, I would say to my children, you are looking at your hamburger.  I'm surprised not one of them are vegetarian but my point was to drive home the animal sacrifice that was made for them to enjoy their food.  I had a ceramics teacher in college who lived on a farm in Indiana and they raised the food they ate including meat.  He purposely wanted his children to participate in the slaughter of the animals so they would hold a deeper appreciation for what it took to get food to the table and not be ignorant to the facts.  Conceptually, this city girl thought that was kinda cool.

But I was talking about "The Chitllin' Circuit".   This was also the name that African American artists gave the route of venues mostly throughout the south that they could work in...months on end travelling from one spot to the next.  It was a difficult and hard way to make a living in the era of racial violence and segregation. As a cultural, historical, and geographical connection, I thought the name to be perfect.  But weighing my views on art and holiness, the current name will stay until a time, if ever, I can change it.

Crowbonics: The Scroll

detailed view (c) 

 

 

by Karen R. Davis (Karoda)

seamless_skin@yahoo.com

Louisville, Kentucky

2010

40.5 inches x18 inches

whole cloth with laminated sheer.

hand-dyed cotton; medium weight stabilizer; wool batting; Jacquard cotton; rayon , cotton, and metallic threads; polyester sheer; paper, textile medium; fusible web.

After hearing a 2008 NPR segment on the intelligence of Crows, I became captivated by the rich black birds and wanted to rescue them from their oftentimes less than favored status.  My intent to represent the American Crow for this exhibit was further shored up by the sadness of the absence of information on James Audubon’s mother which I surmised was due to her race, class, and gender.  I even went so far as to project Audubon’s love for birds and being in the wilderness as a spiritual restlessness caused by not knowing her.

Crowbonics: The Scroll is the first of what will be 3 pieces depicting the culture of Crows.  The Crows are the marginalized birds with their own values and ways in the world.  Those not privy to them, often see but do not understand. To the Crow, it doesn’t matter; they carry on, surviving and making their presence known through their distinguished song.

$2800

 

**********

 

There were 5 starts to the Crow piece before this became the one that felt completely right.  It would not have been possible without attending the Paper Lamination workshop at the Crow Barn last month.

 

I will not have time to photograph the full size until its return, but the detailed image is a good representation of the entire piece.

Crowbonics

 

Building #2, Mellwood Arts & Entertainment Complex

Even though Claire and Leslie were not present for the workshop, I find working with the processes highly transformative.  The week at the Crow Barn made me come to a decisive decision to turn The Beauty of Holiness Studio at Mellwood into a wet work studio.  I was leaning that way by way of wanting to try wet and nuno felting.  It didn't take long for me to move my dye supplies and accessories there. 

Yesterday I had a stretch of time that I spent at the studio and my goal was to work on the "crow" piece but I couldn't find the laminated pieces I did and was  for certain they were there.  After tracing my steps they turned up at Valerie's house where I had taken them to show her what I worked on.  I could have sworn that I had put them back in the car and my fear was that I had lost them out of the car in the moving of supplies.  I was close to heartbroken and panic when Val returned my call and said they were there!!!  My aim is to pick them up today.

Here are 2 of the fabrics I did while at the Crow Barn:

This is a side view of the piece.  Corrected view is 90 degrees left.  I'm calling the series Crowbonics.  I was going to call it The Secret Language of Crows but I challenged myself to find another word, a created word, that expressed my intentions.  I selected the Crow not only because I'm enamored with their intelligence, but also Crows represent cultures of people who are not centered in the mainstream.  The people can function on their own terms and/or seek/struggle to lessen disenfranchisement by the mainstream and/or people who attempt to balance the dualities of their own defined culture with co-existence in a mainstream/pop culture.   This way I include Audubon's mother, an African French woman of mixed race.  The piece has to be completed and in Henderson, Kentucky by the 28th of this month. 

Here is another partial view of a laminated piece:

Dark clouds, thunder, wind, and rain are going on.  Fine, if I'm not compelled to be out...but I must do what I must do. On second thought, I'm going to wait it out!  May the angels cover us all.

Monday Warm-up

Mondays are for warm-ups...Every Monday when I return to my workshop after two, sometimes three days away, I still experience awe...I look around and see that everything is as I left it...waiting for me. I spend the weekends planning and knowing in my head what I'm going to do come Monday...but I arrive and each Monday I've asked myself "okay, now, what am I going to do?".  I take a deep breath and start where I left off...unlike the first few weeks were I did busy work (beading on Red) to get use to the schedule, the space,...all the while churning and kneading ideas over and over.

The Poetry Series really excites me...I mean really really excites me, but I'm also aware that I feel very reverent for the work, for the process. And today, after years of not writing any new poems, it came to me that I need to write a new body of work that speaks to the future and is more current.  Writing poetry was just as intense and physical as creating quilted art, conjuring feelings of awe, reverence, and soul breaking open experience when something is working and I'm one with it.

I was in the workshop today for seven hours taking breaks every two hours for about 15-20 minutes.  I started and finished 8"x10" piece called 725-Prerequisite Study.  It was to audition the quilting pattern and threads which I think will work very well for these pieces.  Its important to me that every layer speaks to "rememory".  I almost added a Sankofa motif but decided against it because the quilt itself is Sankofa.

Here is a peak at it...I'll show it in it's entirety after it arrives to one of the Pay-It-Forward recipients.

It maybe a small piece but it took a big mess to get it done.  I usually straighten up before leaving because it makes me have more clarity when I return.  But I was too tired and left the mess as is: