Just Clothes?

It seems most appropriate that after almost a month since last posting that I should start out this new year with a post about some other artist beside myself. Don't worry, I'll be back to me before we're finished here.

I was impressed by an article I recently read in the January 2010 issue of ARTnews.
Barbara Pollack wrote about Baltimore artist Shinique Smith whose work includes calligraphy based paintings incorporating second-hand clothing and sculptures which also use clothing as the primary material. Ms. Smith, a once-upon-a-time graffiti artist, pursued a formal art education at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where in addition to calligraphy, she studied anatomy and assemblage then became involved in creating performance pieces and videos. The artwork is exquisite and the article is very complimentary (I don't think I've seen ARTnews articles that aren't complimentary. It must be a rule not to review work you don't like.) This review addresses the materials and the influences on Smith's work and peers into the connections of clothing to each of us and the rest of the world. Perhaps, that is all that needs to be said. Good article. Great artwork. And yet, there seems to be a more visceral, raw and emotional story that goes untold.

This is where I inject myself into the topic and make this all about me again. Told you not to worry.

Most of my work (as well as the work of every other thinking artist I've ever met) depends on vision and perception. Personally, that vision keys on the whole left brain / right brain question, on the order of seeing specific shapes and figures in a bank of clouds or in the patterns running through a slab of marble. When I first started creating abstract paintings, my inclination was to finish a piece by painting darker lines on the images within the image to bring them forward so everyone else could see them as well. I have often pondered the possibility that my subconscious guides my hand to create these images for my meditative mind to find upon nearing the completion of the work.
Likewise, as I view Shinique Smith's work the same thought occurs. When I look at "Twilight's Compendium," her installation piece in multiple blues in both paint and clothing created for the EMBRACE exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, I see the strong profile of a black male built into the central core of the piece which hangs from the ceiling. The lines of the face etched out in the way she has tied the bundle of clothing together could be the victim of a lynching. Of course, this may not be some subconscious rage over injustice gone unpunished. It may simply be what I see in the beautifully executed sculpture/painting. It could just as easily be an angel.