33 - Alice Stone-Collins—At Home Transforming the Mundane / December 31, 2020 by Vivian Liddell

Alice Stone-Collins on the process of working with cut paper:

It's the same thing I guess as if you were working on a painting and you knew it needed something and you would have to either rub something out and repaint on top of it. I guess the only difference is is I'm just doing it with with cut paper. I also kind of like building them from the ground up. Like I like the concept of painting that street with all those deer and seeing what it looked like before all the deer were put down. Any type of interior space —like again the bed and the bunnies— I like seeing the empty room just with the floorboards and then gluing the bed down. Like it's almost like you're like going through the process of adding fur(niture)— …It makes me feel a closer connection to the pieces and the places that I'm recreating.

25 - Donna Mintz—Reflections on the Sublime through Storytelling and the Visual Arts / May 11, 2019 by Vivian Liddell

Donna Mintz on her artwork:

They are glass plate negatives— from late 1800s to around 1910 or 12 are the dates that I’ve seen on them— that I got at a flea market in Chelsea New York, in lower Manhattan. … I bought the first one thinking “I don’t know but one day I’m going to do something with this” because It was a forest and I love the scene. And I put gold leaf on the back of them. And they end up being the one object in this whole exhibition that I think captures that exact idea I’m trying to capture—which is that a memory, a moment in time so finite and fleeting has been made permanent. First by the photographer by fixing this image…that was then maybe printed, maybe not. Who knows where the photograph is… cast off and I found 120 years later!? And made into what I think is a beautiful object that has the gravitas of an important memory. To me they’re not— because I don’t know even where they were made. But I’ll say, I just love them.

17 - Shanequa Gay—Breaking through the American Façade / August 31, 2018 by Vivian Liddell

Shanequa Gay on starting her new body of work:

There was something Dr. Napoleon Wells—he is a professor/psychologist over at Columbia College in South Carolina—there was something he said. He was like in charge of facilitating my artist talk when I was in South Carolina and he said, “African-American women, black women, are the best to tell the American story.” Why? Because we are the ones who are the furthest on these fringes, on these edges. And so, It made me begin to think about… his why. We’re observers, you know, the ones who are … kind of at the edges and including our children. Right? And so, you very rarely hear our stories. You very rarely hear our information. And yet we’re the ones in spaces of service. … His understanding or his sharing of that— I was like, I’m African-American. So why am I a best story teller and why am I a good story teller? And what makes my narrative important? And why is my narrative just as American as a white male?

Our society tells us that it’s not. I’m hyphenated. I’m hyphenated in how I move here, in my space. And so, if mine is just as American with or without the African-American— what does that look like and what does that mean? Which is why I’m seeking out spirituality, because I don’t always know where my work comes from. I don’t always know where these ideas are coming from. But I do like to move on them.