Critical Portraiture: Black/Women/Artists/Educators/Researchers

I believe that telling our stories, first to ourselves and then to one another and the world is a revolutionary act.

—Janet Mock (2014)

gloria:

I met Pam several years ago at NAEA in New York. Little did I know that our paths would soon reconnect, as colleagues and faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). For me, our connection was familiar; familial even (Wilson, 2017). I would recognize common intersections of our identities: Black woman/artist/educator/researcher.

pam:

I was thrilled when our department chair confirmed that Gloria would be joining us at VCU—I have always been the only art educator of color, any color, at my past institutions, and having Gloria join us made me feel like VCU was truly keeping their promise to hire more faculty of color and be more inclusive.

Context

The function of art is . . . to imagine what is possible.

—bell hooks (2006)

________

{Who are you and what do you do?}

gloria:

I am a woman of color/artist/educator/researcher. I have been making “things” for as long as I can remember and would find a deep love for textiles and garments through the sartorial profession of my uncles. In undergrad, I would formally train in oil painting, yet I would return to textiles in grad school at the University of Georgia. Printmaking would become my method of choice for interacting with fibrous surfaces (see artwork, Figure 1, Black on Black). This has most recently been reflected in my research, teaching, and art-making practices (Wilson 2018).

Figure 1.

(Detail) Gloria J. Wilson, 2016, Black on Black no. 1 [Pattern repeat on textile, vegetable fiber (cotton), New Black, Dharma Reactive Procion dye].

pam:

As a fifth-generation Black educator from a family of artists spanning visual art, music, theater, and dance, I was encouraged from the time I could walk to engage in the arts. My art documents my family history as a means of understanding it and how it impacted my sense of self. I discovered my love for printmaking as a high school freshman. I pursued printmaking in college and completed an MFA in printmaking from Howard University. I experimented with a variety of printmaking processes and fell in love with relief printing, woodcuts in particular. All my work is an exploration of family themes and the strong Black women who inspire me.

{What themes do you pursue in your work?

How does race play a role in the work you do?}

gloria:

I mostly pursue themes that interrogate systems of power, specifically examining the intersections of race and arts participation. In my 13 years of teaching art in K–12 environments, what became distinctively clear is that the racialized experiences and outcomes of minoritized students were uniquely specific and, ultimately, inequitable. These experiences would later influence my pedagogical/research/art-making practices as an art educator in the academy. To these ends, as a woman of color, I have felt the push/pull to put forward creative work about race that would trouble the waters of these structural inequities.

Figure 2.

Pamela Harris Lawton, 2016, Lilian Burwell (artist, my elementary school art teacher) [Woodcut. 18 × 24 in.].

pam:

My artwork continues to center on themes of work/careers of women in my family and family history. I coined the term Artstories to describe my work—a combination of visual imagery and verbal text in the form of prints, artist’s books, and assemblages that preserve, explore, and re-interpret family history, identity, and intergenerational relationships. The intersections of race and gender are continuous themes in my work and provide me with an outlet for expressing pride, angst, socio-political concerns, and just making meaning, particularly in times of challenge.

Relationship

I have never seen so much power in the ability to move and transform others as from that of the writing of women of color.

—Gloria E. Anzaldúa (2015, p. 172)

{What is the role of art making in your teaching/research...