36″x52″, printed on cotton, 2017

Get Give Pattern

Give Get vector detail

New View Pattern

New View vector detail

I revisited my Mend Type and fabric studies. I wanted to refine the craft of them and reveal more of their initial concepts which involved: reviewing, remembering and forgetting. But I also wanted to retain some of its history by using similar colors and fabric.

Related project: Mend Typeface

*Photo credit: Matthew Garin

Panels: 20″x40″, inkjet on canvas, 2016

Reviewing images of Claudette Colvin and Jeremiah Reeves along with my previous overlap studies of Rosa Parks and Emmett Till.

Text: A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon by Gwendolyn Brooks

On March 2, 1955, Claudette Colvin, age 15, refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, AL segregated bus — 9 months prior to Rosa Parks. After being taught about black literature and past heroes such as Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, she explained how her knowledge and resolve would not allow her to rise from her seat. She had also previously experienced a classmate of hers, Jeremiah Reeves (age 16), being convicted and placed on Death Row for being falsely accused of serially raping white women. Despite efforts to free him, he was later executed by electric chair in 1958 at age 22.

I cannot fully remember how I came across Ms. Colvin’s name but it was during my research of Rosa Parks and Viola Liuzzo. I learned of Jeremiah’s name through writings about her. The parallels between Colvin/Reeves and Parks/Till being so apparent moved me to somehow link their identities in this project. So I reached back to my re-membering study about Parks and Till. Also during this time, I was taking a Modern Literature course and became more exposed to artists such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes and many others. I had previously examined Brooks’ poem of Bronzeville mother, which was written in response to Emmett Till’s murder. So all of these things or awarenesses just merged together for this project.

Related Project: Re-membering Study: Rosa Parks and Emmett Till

*Photo Credit: Matthew Garin (first image)

Inkjet prints, 32″x40″, 2017

Poster 1 of 12

Poster 7 of 12

Poster 9 of 12

Poster 12 of 12

I revisited my initial study (What’s in a Name: Viola Liuzzo) as an underlying grid to arrange and reveal more content behind Viola Liuzzo’s name. Across the 12 posters a passage is revealed as other surrounding content transitions from primary to supporting content.

Photographs gathered from various news clippings, FBI reports and book, From Selma to Sorrow: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo, Mary Stanton (1998). Photos of her park’s groundbreaking taken by myself.

Passage on posters by Rev. Malcolm Boyd as recorded in same book, From Selma to Sorrow, page 224:

It wasn’t easy knowing you, or even hearing you. I felt in fact, that you were often strong-willed, uncharitable, and impolite. But I saw you pouring out your life. I resented that too, as I safely clutched my own. But I did see you though sometimes I didn’t want you to know it.

Yes, I heard the criticism—and I joined in. At times I thought I hated you, because what you said and did cut so painfully against my mask, my security, my being.

I miss you very much. Thank you—for who you were and whose you were. You wouldn’t want me to wish you “peace,” and I could never think of you in any misalliance with a false truce or easy compromise.

But I do, with all heart, wish you peace with deep restlessness, a cock crowing at dawn to announce battle, and love to heal all the necessary wounds.

–Rev. Malcolm Boyd, “To a Prophet Dying Young”

Related projects:

• What’s in a Name Series
• Archive Collection: Viola Liuzzo
• Quickhand Typeface

*Photo Credit: Matthew Garin (first image)

Vinyl, embroidery, 12”x12” / 30”x30”, 2016
*Photo Credit: Matthew Garin

Text and inspiration from the book, Quicksand by Nella Larsen.

Quicksand by Nella Larsen at Bent, But Unbroken Exhibition, 2017
(Charles H. Wright Museum, Detroit, MI)

Quicksand follows the life of character, Helga Crane, a woman of mixed, black/white, race during the 1920s who travels from place to place in search of lasting satisfaction that she never finds. She continually explores various predetermined categories for black women and becomes irritable once she runs into their walls. She would experience these moments during artistic happenings in the book such as dancing to jazz at a Harlem cabaret, gospel spirituals sung in a church service and experiencing black performers on stage during a vaudeville performance with a predominantly white audience in Copenhagen. This project focuses on the vaudeville performance and cabaret/jazz scene. In Copenhagen, she realizes that the white audience viewed her the same as the black performers on stage, a spectacle to be entertained and pleased by. In Harlem, after she enjoys dancing freely with other blacks she immediately shuts down her enjoyment by likening herself and those dancing to jungle creatures.

I was initially exposed to Larsen and Quicksand during my Modern Literature course. I enjoyed the author and book so much that I wrote my final essay about them. Here’s the concluding paragraph which may give more insight into this project:

All endings considered, Larsen sets up the reader to create their own next chapter for Helga’s life. The reader is left to wonder themselves about plausible avenues for Helga to travel away from her recurring dissatisfaction. Larsen again traps the reader into traveling with Helga versus observing her from a spectator’s position. Witnessing how Helga wonders and explores various stations in life triggered by irritation encourages the reader to move between their own irritation and wonderment about the available categories for identifying themselves in society. Just as music, specifically The Blues, creates space for outward participation and personal connection, Larsen has created this same space by pulling the readers into Quicksand with Helga. By intermingling her experiences with those of Helga and creating spaces for outside participation, she makes internal insight more accessible in improvisational form. The challenge of traveling the unknown is revealed and made available to those who choose to be dissatisfied with their stability.

Courtney Richardson, April 29, 2016
Essay: 325-326. Helga Nella
ENG 5450 (Modern American Literature):
“Feeling Modern: The Affects of Modernity”
Professor Jonathan Flatley

I also enjoyed ngai’s analysis of Quicksand, which I cited in my paper.
*ngai, sianne. Ugly Feelings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2004. Print.

Inkjet print, 20″x36″, 2016

Process drawings

I revisited the technique I used for the Mend study. Instead of overlapping roman and italic styles of a found typeface, I overlapped my own print/cursive handwriting. I’m still playing with the concept of visualizing 2 sides of the same story by using 2 styles of the same typeface. By switching to my own handwriting, I noticed how time adds another element. As I rewrote lines of letters at different speeds I noticed shapes and angles changed in relationship to my writing speed. This gave me more to think about regarding memory and/or storytelling shared over varying timespans.

Related project: Mend Typeface

*Photo Credit: Matthew Garin (first image)

*Photo Credit: Matthew Garin

Piece 2 of 3, 2016

Chiffon, linen, embroidery, 54″x58″

*Photo Credit: Laura Maker

*Photo Credit: Robin Wagner

I revisited a piece from the previous re-membering study of Rosa Parks and created a pattern from it. During this time, I was studying quilts, specifically those with narrative and archival functionality. I wanted to add content back into the graphical shapes that I had earlier stripped to present another perspective. I’m currently working on expanding this into a 3 piece series to reveal more (and less) of this narrative.

Related project: Re-membering Study: Rosa Parks and Emmett Till