When I was younger my dad would take me and my brother to a small children’s museum where Norman Rockwell paintings hung and finger paint stains could be found on bathroom walls. Norman Rockwell tells America’s stories, my dad told me on our first visit to the museum. Okay, I thought to myself. This guy is a storyteller and every time I thought of Rockwell, I thought of America and stories and history.
Years later, I was having a discussion with a few friends about art and the ways in which art serves as documentation. We had all come to the consensus that art was a unique method of communicating history and culture ( i.e Mr. Rockwell). My friends and I were all Americans but I was the only African-American and as I was listening to the conversation, I couldn’t help but wonder where I could find the art that documented life of the hyphen. For while Mr. Rockwell and other American realists painters undertook the noble cause of preserving casual Saturday strolls to the diner or hammock naps, where was the preservation of those stories of people who looked like me?
And so I did what any inquisitive mind would do: I searched for answers. At times, I found my nose buried deep in a book and other times I found myself at a gallery, eager to stumble upon an artist whose works spoke to the history of my blackness. Last week I told you about a new exhibit, Ain’t I A Woman, at MoCADA in Brooklyn that features the work of several artists. Sculptor Phoenix Savage is among the artists featured in the exhibit and her piece Antithesis is a powerful example of art that speaks to and about the complexities of black femaleness, Diasporian culture, and the beauty of our existence.
The most fascinating element of Savage’s Antithesis are the cast iron eggs that rest atop colorful pillow mounds. The piece reckons with the ongoing discussion about black women and the myth of invulnerability. Yet, cast iron is a unique element of Savage’s general artistry. Her use of cast iron began after a project was lost during Hurricane Katrina. ” I was in New Orleans before the storm and I had this body of work based on Aunt Jemima but it was castings that I had down of women in my community when I lived in Nashville and the work ended up in New Orleans with me and I had to leave the work behind and I moved but the work was made out of plaster so it got destroyed in the storm and that’s what lead me to the casting because I felt so vulnerable from that destruction and I felt like I wanted to work in a way where my work was indestructible.” Savage’s desire for preservation lead to her new practice of cast iron sculpture however the implication of preservation extends beyond the physical. ” Casting is very difficult, it’s very time consuming and casting iron is more difficult, more time consuming than casting bronze or other metals and most people don’t like it because it’s iron so you don’t get that same glory feeling from it but the iron is who I am as a black person.”
It is the historical importance of iron within the framework of American history and the experience of Africans in America that motivates Savage’s work. While she admits that when she first began practicing art she “didn’t know the difference between fine art and commercial art”, she has always known how to express herself. Her work invites the viewer to acknowledge the contribution of black laborers in the U.S. while prompting dialogue about the future of our community. ” I am honoring those laborers who specifically understood and worked on iron plantations and contributed to the massive economic and overall greatness of this here America so for me to display the iron in a totally non-utilitarian form and to display it in a manner of fine art is highly significant for a black person to do.”
Savage boldly proclaims her message as a black artist. Indeed, she is a storyteller, a griot who is dedicated to using her art form as a point of reclamation and examination. ” I believe that my success- even though it may be a little bit more difficult, even though there may not be a big market for it- my success comes in looking at who we are as a people and figuring out how to visualize that so that you, or anybody else who can relate to you is able to locate themselves, you are able to locate yourself and I am able to locate myself in what I’ve just done.”
If you’re like me, ever inquisitive, ever eager for knowledge, I encourage to learn more about Phoenix Savage.
It’s good to find the answers to the questions we ask.
