Learning to Slow Down with Sanford Biggers (Part I)

Posted on November 1, 2021 by Experiment Station

Our latest Intersections project, Sanford Biggers: Mosaic, includes a site-specific floor installation made with sand. Five of the Phillips’s Museum Assistants—Rachel Cecelski, Jorge Vara Hernandez, Shawn Lindsay, Andreia Silva, and Emma Sweeney—were selected to help Biggers produce the work. Jorge and Rachel share their impressions of the project.

Read Part II from Emma

Creating Sanford Biggers’s floor installation in Mosaic. Photo: Robin Bell

Jorge Vara Hernandez (@j.varah), a graduate of University of Maryland’s BA Film Studies program, is a painter.

“Initially my reason for wanting to help with the project was to gain more experience with the process of art installations, and to have a closer look at a curator’s duties within a museum setting. However, after doing more research on Sanford Biggers’s work before starting the project, my reason for participating changed dramatically. His sampling of other cultures into his own work really identified partly with my own philosophy on creating art. As a painter I felt that although the medium is not connected to my own work, it would definitely be an experience that I could learn from.

Communally working on this project with fellow artists was much more challenging than I expected. The process of pouring sand to realize Biggers’s design was unexpectedly painful—both mentally and physically. More than a few hours on your knees will start to take a toll on your body. A manic focus is needed to properly apply the sand while also ignoring the physical pain of your body. There is also a struggle with one’s ego as the learning curve of a new medium is experienced. Sand is not easy to control. The dispersive nature of the sand requires very intense, slow, and concentrated action. Working on this project forced me to slow down and enjoy that struggle again.

Creating Sanford Biggers’s floor installation in Mosaic. Photo: Robin Bell

While working, the ephemeral quality of the piece was mentioned; it will be “destroyed.” That part of this project really impacted me—the fact that with certainty the work that we put in will be reduced to our mere memory of it. Which is where I think the true worth of art actually lies; in the impact and remaining memory of said trauma. Which was very interesting considering a lot of Mr. Biggers’s work references historical traumas. Also there was something playful and humorous about putting in so much work for what some would consider to be “for nothing.” I think that irony is purposeful as the piece is titled Fool’s Folly. A title which I think is suggestive about the act of making art. One could consider the ephemeral quality of the sand quilt to cause the act of making it a fool’s folly. However, that ephemeral quality is exactly what gives it meaning and purpose, because of our will to create it.”

Creating Sanford Biggers’s floor installation in Mosaic. Photo: Robin Bell

Rachel L. Cecelski (@miss.rachel_studios), a graduate of the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, is a freelance illustrator and art teacher.

“I learned so much helping with the installation of Sanford Biggers’s Mosaic exhibition. I have used many mediums in my artwork, but never sand. Sandford taught me to slow down, learn the meditative state, trust yourself, trust the process of the installation. As always, I love watching an art come together and the thrill of the finished piece.”

On the wall, left to right: Aolar Mosely, Blocks, c. 1955; Malissia Pettway, Housetop, c. 1960; Sanford Biggers, Mosaic, 2021. On the floor: Sanford Biggers, Fool’s Folly, 2021. Photo: Lee Stalsworth

Portraits and Personhood

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Experiment Station

2021-22 Sherman Fairchild Fellow Gary Calcagno on Bridget Cooks‘s essay about portraits and identity.

If you wanted to be memorialized, how would you want to be represented? A grand oil painting, a black-and-white photo, or maybe an abstracted sculpture?

When reading Bridget Cooks’s essay in her new co-edited publication, Mannequins in Museums, I was struck by the visceral scenes in the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore where wax figures and mannequins present African American history and the Black experience to write a history that has far too often been overlooked.

As Cooks writes, mannequins engage us in ways traditional 2D media do not. Life-sized famous figures, like W.E.B. DuBois and the Egyptian pharaoh Imhotep, stand in front of visitors and prompt an immediacy that founders Drs. Elmer and Joanne Martin felt was important in presenting African American history to the Baltimore community. Portraits, both painted or sculpted, remind us of those who came before us and prompt us to think about the accomplishments and legacies of memorialized figures.

Famous figures have been immortalized in artworks for millennia across various media. From photos like Alvin Coburn’s photogravure of Theodore Roosevelt (1907) to Delacroix’s painting of violinist and composer Nicolo Paganini (1831), these figures are both recognizable yet distant. We know Roosevelt by his furry mustache and round specs while the violin serves as Paganini’s attribute in his portrait.

Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix, Paganini, 1831, Oil on cardboard on wood panel, 17 5/8 x 11 7/8 in., The Phillips Collection, Acquired 1922.

Portraits show us a likeness of a person that can be highlighted and blurred too. While contemporary accounts remarked on Paganini’s missing teeth or pallid complexion, Delacroix depicts the virtuoso illuminated by stage light against a dark backdrop. Think of photographs today that undergo filters and retouching that present a familiar yet modified reality. Duncan Phillips even referred to the portrait as a “tiny soul-portrait” perhaps commenting on Delacroix’s ability to capture Paganini’s lifelike image in paint. Yet, the immediacy of Paganini is not as close to us compared to something like a sculpture that enters our physical space.

Simone Leigh, No Face (Crown Heights), 2018, Terracotta, graphite ink, salt-fired porcelain, and epoxy, 20 x 8 in., The Phillips Collection, Director’s Discretionary Fund, 2019

Compare Simone Leigh’s No Face (Crown Heights) (2018), for example, where a human bust is both present and absent. The black porcelain blooms with blue terracotta spirals where a face would be as Leigh obfuscates the traditional portrait bust. Leigh describes her work as “auto-ethnographic” as the work references Crown Heights, a haven in Brooklyn for Black free people in the nineteenth century. The bust is no single individual but instead references a whole community including the tradition of unnamed African women potters. While the Great Blacks in Wax Museum honors individuals in full-length wax, Leigh honors unnamed groups in a single terracotta bust.

To hear more from Bridget Cooks, join us on November 17 at 6 pm for “Haunted: The Black Body as Ancestor and Spectre” where Professor Cooks will be in conversation with Robert Cozzolino, curator of paintings at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. The lecture is part of a series in partnership with the University of Maryland addressing racial justice across disciplines, Antiracism: Communities + Collaborations.

Why You Must See an Alma Thomas in Person

Posted on October 27, 2021 by Experiment Station

Summer 2021 Curatorial Intern Naimah Jangha shares her impressions of experiencing Alma Thomas’s work.

Recently, I had the immense pleasure of examining the work of Alma Thomas up close. Part of my internship entailed a visit to the Howard University Art Gallery which has five Thomas paintings in its collection: Phantasma from 1960, Blue Abstraction from 1961, Abstraction (Untitled) from 1967, Orange Glow from 1968, and Forsythia Among Spring Flowers from 1972. Previously, I have seen her artwork through images in textbooks and online, but after seeing her paintings in person, I can safely say that reproductions do not do her art justice.

There are nuances in her paintings that are more easily interpreted by the eye and not always captured on camera. Prime examples of these are her expert use of subtle layering to create luminosity and her use of color theory to create vibrancy in Blue Abstraction and Forsythia Among Spring Flowers. You will be able to see these paintings in the Alma W. Thomas: Everything Is Beautiful exhibition opening at the Phillips on October 30.

Alma Woodsey Thomas, Blue Abstraction, 1961, Oil on canvas, 34 x 40 in., Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, DC / Licensed by Art Resource, NY. Photo: Gregory R. Staley

In Blue Abstraction, one is immediately confronted with various hues of blue, green, white, and red. Upon closer inspection, one notices the little dab of bright orange on the left margin of the painting. There is an energy created by her strategic color placement and layering. Among the sea of blues, there is a large island of green near the center of the composition and smaller patches of pink in the upper corners that add dynamism. One sees a careful placement of red and bright smears of bold white that also contribute to the energy of the painting. This translates on camera well, but the reason you must see it in person is the nuances found with close examination. For example, while I was looking at Blue Abstraction, I noticed that one area in the upper left corner was far more complex than I originally thought. There is a large swatch of white covered mostly by a pale green. This green gradually deepens in shade at the bottom of the modified rectangular shape created. There is a murky splotch of muted blues swirled with an orangish-brown right above the white-green swatch. What I found most interesting about this section is the perimeter of the colors. Thomas takes advantage of the textures of the canvas and the dark blue ground. The result is a beautiful translucent spattering of bright green and white. The layering of these thinner dabs of paint contrasts with the deep rich blue background and creates delicious pockets of luminosity that must be devoured in person.

Alma Woodsey Thomas, Forsythia Among Spring Flowers, 1972, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 52 in., Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, DC / Licensed by Art Resource, NY. Photo: Gregory R. Staley

Much like Blue Abstraction, Forsythia Among Spring Flowers plays with layers and opacity to create luminosity. At first glance, one sees a lot of yellow with green and brown peeking through underneath. Then one notices a play on foreground and background. There are areas where what one originally thought was the negative space in the background is layered on top of the yellow to become the foreground. A chief example of this can be seen in the lower right quadrant. When looking closely in person, I noticed that the green marks, usually reserved for the background, were painted on top of the yellow. Thomas used the green to adjust the shape and size of her yellow “Alma stripes,” which made the green in this section appear more saturated. Through close looking, I also noticed differences in saturation within the yellow dabs. This is because Alma Thomas layered different opacities of yellow on top of each other. As a result, some dabs appear brighter than others, creating luminosity. She achieves delicacy in her paintings through this process. This delicacy is best digested in person.

When appreciating her work, I highly encourage you to stop for a moment and look for these nuances. Find the areas in Forsythia Among Spring Flowers where the dark brown background has a dot of two lighter brown shades between the yellow stripes, or where there is a small drip of white. Look for the dab of orange in Blue Abstraction. Pay attention to the edges of color Thomas paints and how her knowledge of color theory and her layering of colors creates luminosity and vibrancy. Pause and look closely at every beautiful detail in each painting. I can assure you that there are many to be found. I implore you to make a trip to The Phillips Collection to see Everything Is Beautiful this fall because pictures do not capture the nuances and details that distinctly define her work. You will not be disappointed.