Cut Paper Art Silhouettes - Zora Neal Hurston

I am working on a paper cutting silhouette series that will include prominent black artists, writers, poets, speakers, leaders, etc. When I created the poets silhouettes (see here) I wasn't even thinking of doing a series. Over time I realized that people use quotes from famous people to encourage and to uplift them. This is what I want my art to do for people. I got a lot of interest in the first two, so I decided to design a couple more. 

My next two will be Zora Neal Hurston and Ralph Ellison. I am using the bold portion from Zora's essay:

AT CERTAIN TIMES I have no race, I am me. When I set my hat at a certain angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue, Harlem City, feeling as snooty as the lions in front of the Forty?Second Street Library, for instance. So far as my feelings are concerned, Peggy Hopkins Joyce on the Boule Mich with her gorgeous raiment, stately carriage, knees knocking together in a most aristocratic manner, has nothing on me. The cosmic Zora emerges. I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.
I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored. I am merely a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries. My country, right or wrong.
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.

 -Zora Neale Hurston, "How it Feels to Be Colored Me"

This essay speaks to me because I live in a time where black beauty is being shunned even more by the norm but there are movements on the rise that state #blacklivesmatter #blackgirlrock #blackoutday. These movement are necessary like when James Brown declared, "I am black and I am proud." It helped foster the winds of change for African Americans, to be proud of who they are and where they come from. If we as a people aren't proud, no one is going to proud for us. African Americans are still being greatly discriminated against but how Zora beautifully puts it... "It merely astonishes me. How can they deny themselves the pleasure of my company."

How can they?...

( I will update with pictures soon.)

Zora Neal Hurston

First project for the year

I started on my first original paper cut art for the New Year and it is all about symbols- Adinkra Symbols and fabrics. I love symbols! They are secretive, original, and complex.

A symbol ... is a visual image or sign representing an idea -- a deeper indicator of a universal truth, according to the book of Sign and Symbols. To give you some background on Adinkra symbols we have to go back to Africa. Ghana to be more specific, to a group of people called the Akan’s. They used Adinkra symbols to represent concepts and aphorism. The symbols can be found on fabric, pottery, walls of homes, furniture and even gold weights. They are used to convey traditional wisdom and are linked with African proverbs. (Which I like to use in my art also.)

I started off with doing research on printed fabrics with Adinkra symbols for reference and picked the symbols that I like for meaning and the shape. I want my art to covey positive traits that a women can have or aspire to have and display. I also, want this art to be fun and bright. So after I cut the art out I will start on working on color ways that are on trend for the 2015 season.