Exploring identity through portraiture and textiles with The Woods Primes (K/1)
Identity is the unique set of characteristics that can be used to distinguish a person as themself and no one else. In the Woods Primes we have spent our year thinking about who we are. Where do we come from? What do we love? What makes us feel safe to express ourselves? In an attempt to link this powerful introspective work to learning about each other, we opened up an area in our classroom last fall called The Portrait Studio. Each day, a photo of a Woods Prime was on display in The Portrait Studio with an invitation to honor this friend by drawing their portrait. Before long, our classroom walls were filled with portraits of everyone, with each drawing representing a tiny moment of connection between the artist and the subject.
When the frigid, wet days of winter appeared, The Woods Primes found themselves indoors more than they were accustomed to. During this time, a stitching craze took hold of the group. We supported this new interest in textile arts by learning about the history of the Gee’s Bend quiltmakers–a group of women and their ancestors from the Gee’s Bend area of Alabama’s rural Black Belt, whose quilts are celebrated as some of the most significant artistic contributions to American art history. Many Gee’s Bend quilts can be called “my way” quilts, in which quiltmakers start with basic forms and then often follow their own individual artistic paths to stitch unexpected patterns, shapes, and colors.
Pictured above in order: Housetop, Log Cabin Variation by Lucy Mingo. Photo by Steve Pitkin/Pitkin Studio, courtesy of Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Housetop Variation by Loretta Pettway. Photo by Steve Pitkin/Pitkin Studio, courtey of Souls Grown Deep Foundation, and Workclothes Quilt by Mary Lee Bendolph. Photo by Steve Pitkin/Pitkin Studio, courtesy of Souls Grown Deep Foundation
Our interest in portraiture, textile arts, and Black History led us right to the powerful work of Bisa Butler. She creates portraits of people using bright colors, special fabrics, textures, and patterns from Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa to make her quilt collages. We learned about her process and the significance of her work. We were inspired by her use of scale, how she layers fabrics, and the subtle detail used to convey her subjects’ complex individuality. We also had many questions for Bisa Butler, some of which you can read here. We felt inspired to revisit the concept of portraiture, this time with an emphasis on the self and on how we might use different artistic elements to express different facets of ourselves and who we are. In creating these large-scale self portraits, each Woods Prime was given the agency and artistic freedom to combine textiles and portraiture with the goal of authentic expression.
Southside Sunday Morning, 2018. Private collection. Photo by Margaret Fox.
As an outdoor classroom, we generally spend the majority of each day playing and working in nature. To protect our bodies from the elements, we wear functional and protective full body layers called adventure suits. In these life-sized portraits of The Woods Primes, the adventure suits are off! We hope you will take the time to read their artist statements and learn more about what this process has meant to them.
