“Aziza” Claudia Gibson-Hunter

Photograph courtesy of Camille Mosley-Pasley www.PasleyPlace.com

Portfolio of Artwork 919-922

There are some qualities that I see flowing through most of my work: expressive use of color, repetitive patterns, layers, code/visual metaphor/symbol, and it is syncopated. It is multi faceted, painting, drawing, collage, printmaking, and assemblage. Texture, got to have texture.

—“Aziza” Claudia Gibson-Hunter

“Aziza” Claudia Gibson-Hunter, born in 1954, is a painter and mixed media artist who has received a number of honors, fellowships, and residencies, such as the Artist Fellowship Program Grant of the DC Commission of the Arts and Humanities, Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), Bronx Museum of Art Fellowship, and J.D. Rockefeller Arts Administration Fellowship of Arts-in-Education. Since 1987, this Philadelphia native has been a resident of Washington, DC, where, in 1985, she received the MFA degree in printmaking from Howard University. After having spent two years studying at Tyler School of Art, she transferred to the main campus of Temple University, where, in 1975, she was awarded a BS degree in art education. She later studied at Bob Blackburn’s Printmaking Studio and the Canadian School for Non-Toxic Printmaking, where she received a workshop-certificate in non-toxic printmaking. Not only have her artworks been exhibited in such countries as Liberia, Italy, the United Kingdom, Poland, and Argentina, her art has also been mounted in solo and group exhibitions across the United States. She is co-founder of BADC, an artist group in Washington, DC, and she was a member of Where WE At, a group of African American women artists based in Harlem.

In her artist statement, Gibson-Hunter comments on what she calls “the themes of her work” and on her creative process:

I can identify three major themes consistent throughout the majority of my work: image as document, subjugation vs. agency, and studio as lab.

When my images serve as documentation, the exploration of a particular subject through research takes place before the images are developed. Text and photographic images are collected. A visual language is slowly developed and encrypted with messages, recording fragments of information surrounding a particular personal or social issue.

The issue of subjugation vs. agency continues to be a reoccurring theme. These works are my attempt to express opposition to internal and external forces, which impose limitations constraining the human spirit.

Experimental work is just that: works that investigate new concepts, processes, materials, and genres. Consistent engagement in this exercise keeps me abreast of new possibilities in the development of future work.

I describe my creative process as Osirian, as both destruction and construction are utilized over the course of creating the work. I work across many media, allowing the subject matter to guide the type and use of materials.

The following short interview, which I recently conducted with “Aziza” Claudia Gibson-Hunter via email (September 2015), reveals much more about her as a working artist:

ROWELL:

As we come of age in this society, we come to know what our family, friends, and school teachers tell us what they consider art to be. Or we discover their concepts of art from their conversations. From those views and from what we personally encounter in books, magazines, museums, and other locations we evolve our own concepts of art. You probably followed the same line as you were growing up. But you did more than most of us; you decided to study art formally. What led you to visual art as a course of study? When you first encountered visual art as significant forms in this society, what did you think of it? Did your concept of art change then? What directed you as you studied it to make it your life’s work?

GIBSON-HUNTER:

My parents had art in our household. There were commercial prints, but there were also original paintings, African art, photography, and drawings. My mother’s father was a “curator” for the art exhibitions at the Pyramid House in Philadelphia, and her brother used to accompany their father to visit the studios of...