IN TANDEM WITH EXPO CHICAGO 2021, WHICH IS ONLINE THIS YEAR, WE HAVE AN IN-PERSON PREVIEW OF THE FAIR AT OUR NEW YORK SPACE THROUGH APRIL 10. BOOK A VISIT HERE.
De Buck Gallery will exhibit a group selection of multimedia works that explore identity through both historical and imagined narratives. Central to our booth will be a selection of new paintings by Stephen Towns that we will present as a curated preview to his upcoming solo exhibition, ‘Declaration and Resistance,’ opening 2022 at the Westmoreland Museum Of American Art, PA. In addition to this collection of paintings, the gallery will also present a small collection of Towns’ recent quilt work, created in 2020 with imagery drawn directly from African American spirituals. In conversation with Towns’ quilts, we will also show the quilt work of Pittsburgh-based artist, Tina Williams Brewer, whose work is held in the permanent collection of the Westmoreland Museum. Her thoughtful textile pieces explore generational healing through spirituality and a celebration of African American culture. This Online Viewing Room aims to highlight the materiality and intricate details behind Tina Williams Brewers’ beautiful quilt works. When clicking into each artwork record, you will see a YouTube video adjacent to the image. The videos pan over the front and verso of each quilt, providing viewers with unique, up close insights into the detail, material and composition of each work.
Known for her story quilts, Williams Brewer uses symbolism, textile, and fabrics to explore African-American history, generational healing, and the spirituality of her culture. Speaking of her work, Williams Brewer states, “through my work I tell a story, carrying messages from ancestors. My work is a celebration of the profound joy of gathering with loved ones and the strength of spiritual connections. It is an expression of the deep pain of racism and the pathways forward, the resilience of African American families and the light that lifts them up. My intention is to give dignity to human suffering, finding rhythms that are both mind-stirring and soul-soothing.” Williams Brewer’s pieces are primarily hand-quilted and collage mixed-mediums including photo transfers, printmaking, and hand-beading. Each piece is embellished with symbols drawn from African nations and rich colorful fabrics with patterns that allude to both cultural meanings and personal history. Her process creates complex, layered compositions that function as maps investigating her heritage, the African diaspora, and the links between past, present, and future.
If You Don’t Hear the Tap, You Hear the Bang (1998) was created during a transitional period in Brewer’s oeuvre, where she began to move away from historical trauma as a subject and move towards autobiographical pieces that addressed current issues in her life. At the time of this piece, Brewer struggled with workplace sexism as she worked as the manager of a jazz club. Frustrated by the lack of respect she received as a female boss, If You Don’t Hear the Tap, You Hear the Bang was created out of a desire to express her feelings and experiences as a woman. The quilt features two stylized images of Black female dancers that celebrate women in motion (top right). Swirling symbols cascade down the left side of the composition, inspired by an African proverb Brewer felt connected to, “the snail has no hands or feet but it climbs.” The piece is both defiant and celebratory, a reflection of a woman’s resilience, and a reminder to the artist that she was still able to create even within a time in her life that was filled with limitations.
Diaspora Series: Circle Back (2015) is one of Brewer’s more recent works, created for her community as an excavation of history and ancestry. At the center of the composition is a silk screen on South American lace that depicts a map in reference to an ancient history of migration prior to the slave trade. On the right side of the piece, overlapping the circle, Brewer depicts a totem. The collar on the totem is hand silk-screened with imagery she repeats in a number of her quilts, a visual vocabulary that is part of her “Diaspora Series”. The “head” of the totem is patterned with a cosmic symbol for north, south, east, and west. The quilt utilizes layering and multiple overlapping perspectives to create a sense of motion that Brewer intended as a reference to dance and performance. Purple figures at the bottom of the quilt dance in a line, raising their hands to harvest. In the middle of the quilt a large yellow figure depicts a bird’s eye view of a dancing woman. Brewer is heavily inspired by dance and music and the yellow figure was developed from sketches she created in the dark while attending ballet performances. The five white shapes that overlay the center of the composition represent dancing angels. The work as a whole speaks to motion, migration, and the motion of life, echoed most symbolically in the fish that appear swimming up and down the background of the quilt as a representation of the ebb and flow in the process of life. This fish patterned fabric was gifted to Brewer by a friend who visited Kenya, a symbolic addition to the work as Brewer process includes a constant exploration of ancestry and her connection to Africa.
Tina Williams Brewer’s work has been widely displayed both locally and internationally including exhibitions at the United States Embassy in Ghana and the American Craft Museum in New York City. Her work has been recognized by the American Arts in Embassy Program for more than twenty years, and she is the recipient of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Governor’s Awards for the Arts. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, The State Museum of Pennsylvania, The African American Museum of Dallas and she is currently featured in Three Artists (Three Women), a spotlight exhibition of women artists at the Frick Fine Arts Gallery in Pittsburgh.
To view our Online Viewing Room featuring a selection of new paintings by Stephen Towns, which also form part of our presentation at Expo Chicago, follow the link below.
