Comfort
Comfort kills pursuit: FIGHT is a personal mantra for one’s self to be proactive about obtaining one’s goals; a small haiku that warns against complacency and stagnant behavior. Its purpose is to inspire us to battle routine and monotony in our lives. Complacency is the killer of progress and a destroyer of dreams and in time it can turn freethinking or creative thinkers into fear toting routine robots that perform the same movements without thought of change. On a daily basis we fight our comforts. The fight to get of bed and leave the comforter’s warm embrace, to face daily activities, stuck in traffic fighting and jockeying for a faster lane and quicker route only to be elsewhere, fighting for parking, struggling to beat the ticks of a clock and the date of a deadline. For me, the haiku speaks to all this including my creative process, the exploration of new ideas, and challenges with personal issues.
Comfort Kills Pursuit: Fight uses boxing and quilting as the installation’s metaphors. The quilting imagery was chosen for obvious reasons-they are much like paintings, they are a testament to hand-made labors of love. Quilts provide a safe refuge from the cold. They have ability to tell a story through patch worked scraps of fabric. The idea of taking nothing to create something is impressive. While researching ideas, this quote was jotted down on scrap paper from the article Quilts as Symbols in America on the website, http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG97/quilt/cult.html ” …quilts and quilting are used to convey certain themes of self-expression, union of opposite values or people… the formation of close bonds, kin, heritage, history, family, comfort, love, and commitment.” The writing goes on to say ”…Quilting is a medium that can bring contrasting backgrounds together to create a new meaning from the intermixture of its contrasting influences…” The thought of quilts recording history and meshing ideas into a union of various thoughts is a harmonious pattern that relates to my work. In the imagination the hand painted patterns represent small crops from larger paintings that were created in ones visual past. They supply small details of information about the quest to develop an aesthetic that is uniquely Southern and contemporary. They are patches of struggle, comfort, and break through moments about ideals.
With inventive thinking it’s simple to comparing the artists and boxers. Both individuals require rigorous training physically and mentally months before the exhibition. Creatively, it feels like one has to train their hands and ideas in preparation. The artist is up nights jumping rope, hitting the bags, sketching, reading, questioning, truly searching and becoming serial killer obsessed and focused with an idea.
In boxing there is also the interwoven issue of race that has been quilted into the fabric of the sport dating back to the times of Jim Jefferies when he came out of retirement to fight Jack Johnson. Jefferies claimed “I am going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro.” This was the creation of “The Great White Hope”.
In creative thought, The Great Whit Hope is the gallery. It is the stage set by its four white corners mimicking the boxing ring. It is an opponent that has eluded many of fighters or artists. We all believe in its mythical power and its collectors ring side seats to elevate and hype our careers to the next level just by hanging there.
Comfort Kills Pursuit suggests that the boxing metaphor is not a physical fight with thrashing left hooks, upper cuts and jabs that would send paint flying, but a fight for mental liberation. There are many things in our lives that we are fighting to free from our minds. I am fighting for liberation from a history of images that portray of black males as strange fruit, machinery, and property. There is a direct relationship with these images that show humans in horrid conditions, some events that were in my father’s lifetime, even bouts with the Klan that are events in my family. How have these images affected the thought process and the image of self? How have they shaped the spirit? Fighting an internal spiritual bout with these images that have been sewn into the memory, like the scrap fabric of quilts. For me, the Boxers offer a strong positive image for the psyche and a strong reflection of the spiritual self. The poses comment on the physical strength and confidence it takes to pummel and be pummeled. They say mentally tough and continue to pursue.
It is part of my creative process for ideas and subject matter to crisscross and mash-up like the layers of paint that are applied to the canvases or objects. Some are clear and other are there as symbols, cute characters, drips, color blocks, automatic scrawl, cryptic phrase and humorous jokes. In this body of work I try to explore many things at once as I understand how they relate to the ideas in my brain and the installation’s title.
