KAMALA'S BOOK: Contribution from Aziza Claudia Gibson-Hunter

 

A friend of mine said of these times, "adapt or die." Harsh, yes, but indeed, for too many, it is a sober reality, as COVID has swept through the country and the world. On the front page left the purple image is that of an adinkra symbol from Ghana for, "adapt". Within the purple form, the paper has the repeated image of an Ankh,  an Egyptian symbol for Life. On the right the adinkra symbol in green and red-orange speaks to the sanctity of mother earth.


 
The dots and dashes form an abstracted S.O.S. in Morse Code. Do you see more adinkra symbols? To learn more see http://www.adinkra.org/htmls/adinkra_index.htm
 

 
There are more adinkra symbols, and the Patterned shapes form 
symbols http://www.adinkra.org/htmls/adinkra_index.htm
 

 
Dandelions have been a symbol of tenacity and resilience in my work for many years and continue to make their appearance. I enjoy percussive imagery, syncopated in pattern and color.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gail's contribution into Aziza's Book

Image
This was the beginning of my idea, where I used a combination of printed papers from Monotypes, along with my gel medium transfers. Adding colored paper offered less contrast than white paper, however, the results took on a dimensional appearance that magically merged the two media. While introducing Aziza's theme of "the resilience of weeds" I added some weeds growing in my yard. I dried them and then attached them to the collar.  I am happy with the way the swirls within the print appeared through the face. The absence of the rest of the face does't bother me either, as it just reminds me of the parts of a persons face that you no longer see due to COVID19. The nose actually belonged to another mask drawing and the eyes belong to a monotype of a face. The merger was accidental, while playing around with different ideas. The image is reminiscent of Ed Paschke's work, a Polish American painter, but only after the fact, not inspired by. The Cross belonged to my Mot
Read more

GAIL'S CONTRIBUTION TO KAMALA'S BOOK

Image
This mask represents the "metaphoric mask" that my ancestors had to wear to disguise their feelings and disappointment while negotiating through a racist American society.  However, through further research it is also a fact that they had to disguise how smart they were as it relates to knowing how to read and speak proper English. Literacy threatened the major justification of slavery--that black people were"less than human". Therefore, it was to the slave's advantage to express "bad English" to whites because, as Fredrick Douglass (1817-1895) said, "Ignorance is a high virtue in a human chattel; and as the master studies to deepen the slave's ignorance, the slave is cunning enough to make the master think he succeeds." (Paulette Brown-Hinds, Black English during Slavery). In Kamala's book, half of the mask opens to reveal the inside of the page. There, you will find the shape of Africa with a sampling of names of different languages
Read more

Gail's Two-Page Entry for Francine's Book

Image
          This was the beginning of my idea for Francine's book. After receiving her book I had to go sit down and take it all in. That's when I knew it was time to roll up my sleeves and get to work, as my first book challenge has begun. She started her book with an amazing fabric collage in the theme of Black Lives Matter. So in keeping with that theme I used a previous BLM design from a recent drawing of mine and superimposed a gel medium image of a mask from a series of mask drawings created last summer.    On this page I was trying to figure out the layout. I decided to glue the transparencies together first with, you guest it! gel medium. I think at this point I could do a commercial for Liquitex matte medium. If anyone knows how to get this stuff off of your fingers let me know, even when I think it's off, its not. On the second page I was inspired to use the silhouette of a girl swinging, supplied by Francine. I was quite familiar with the silhouette because I own o
Read more