Residency: Danish Arts Workshop

I am currently at a residency at the Danish Arts Workshop. It is the most well resourced art space I have ever been to or even heard of.  It encompasses a metal workshop, wood working shop, photo darkroom, graphic design facility, library, 3-d printing studio, printmaking studio, textile studio and almost 2 dozen artist studios of various sizes but many to do large scale projects.. Oh, and it's free. Paid for by the Danish government. International artists can apply if they have a project in Denmark, and housing is provided. I'm here because I have been invited by curators Louise Lassen Iverson and Rie Hovmann Rasmussen for a solo exhibit in their new art space "meter", slated to open later this year. My show will be in March-May 2017. I'm currently in Denmark from July 25-August 16, 2016 and I have jumped into intense studio work. I am working on my "cuts and burns" series and realized I can actually make a project that I have had in my sketchbook for over a year due to the equipment and technical support that is here. It's related to the "cuts and burns" series I have been working on in that it references the fretwork designs in historic towns on St. Croix.

Interview that aired on Danish National TV this week for a program called Kald Mig Bare Brun (Call Me Brown)

I was interviewed sometime last year in my studio to talk about my artwork in the context of the relationship between the Virgin Islands and Denmark. My sections starts at 22:47 and the part that starts in the Virgin Islands (and with English interviews) is at 12:10ish. Dr. George Tyson (historian), Shelley Moorehead and myself are interviewed respectively.

I love the question that Anna Neye asks me: What kind we use that kind of knowledge for today?
"That kind of knowledge" refers to history.

I like my response. Check it out here:

Call Me Brown- Kald Mig Bare Brun

Exhibition: Anatomy of an Heirloom at Top Hat Gallery with Gerville Larsen and Niarus Benjamin

The show opened March 3, 2016. I showed two series of work: the "Cuts and Burns" series I have been working on for about a year and this newer series of photo-montage work that consists of juxtaposing images to create alternative narratives. 

 

“Fatalism and Fairy Tales and the Predictable Magic of Everything” is a photo-montage that uses two images: one of a story written by the artist’s brother as a young child and saved by their mother; and two of the same brother as a teenager captured in the middle of the act of dunking.  The piece questions which of these images in the fairy-tale, the act of the boy attempting to fly, or the story of the boy with the fatalistic future, surprisingly imagined by a young boy himself. The piece re-creates a tension between the hope and hopeless often experienced in the growing up of black boyhood. 

These photo-montages are a series that explores images from the Danish archives of the Danish West Indies and juxtaposes them with images from the personal archives and albums of the artist. They included images of the artist as an infant in the Virgin Islands and young child in Wisconsin while her father went to seminary school. There is an image of her mother carrying her youngest brother and an image of her father who was a Moravian and later an Anglican priest. The narratives embedded in the images become collapsed, converted, contested and re-imagined in the simple gesture of juxtaposition and/or adding captions to the images. Most of the captions are directly from the archives and then text is added to incorporate another layer to the narrative.

Storm (and other violent distrubances of the pintoresco)

Storm (and other violent disturbances of the pintoresco), charcoal drawing, 2015, La Vaughn Belle

 

I have been working on a new series of drawings on charcoal. Over the past few months I have returned to 2-dimenional works after years of working in video, installation and performance. It has been a very interesting process for me predicated by the time constraints that I have to be in the studio. A lot of the work I have been making is work that I can get immersed into quickly (and leave quickly as well) and that contain repetitive marks or actions.  I am also really examining this idea of returning to this kind of image-making and what that means to me, from this region and space and time, and what I would like to interrogate. It's almost become taboo to work with beach scenes and palm trees and I wanted to challenge myself to do that while at the same time questioning the same archetypes and stereotypes, looking for what could I add to that narrative.

What I most enjoyed and that came as a surprise while making these works was the tension between the fragility of charcoal on paper and the resilience of the image. I often work with a ceiling fan on and that in addition to the pieces getting blown about while hanging on the walls created a literal windswept effect. I was almost tempted to see what would happen to them if I left them out in the rain and wind. Another day.  There is a tension between the pristine, the elegant and the sublime in the midst of the violent chaos of the storm. 

So far the series is 16 of these drawings. I will be showing them for the first time on Thursday, November 19 as a part of Art Thursday event (5-9pm) in Christiansted at my studio located at 18B East St. Come through.

Found this shirt and it reminded me of my painting

chaney "ware"/"wear", La Vaughn Belle, October 2015

I found this shirt and it remind me of my painting, the Chaney series I've been working on for about a year now. Up until now I have been focusing on the blue chaney but would like to explore other colors too. I also have been curious about what these patterns would like like on the skin. This shirt gives me a little bit of an idea. 

New work, new space

"Trading Post", coral cut from the ocean by enslaved Africans used for foundations and walls encased in plexiglass, 2015, La Vaughn Belle

This is a prototype. I may go bigger and/or multiple. I love it. I love the straight cuts on the coral that show the craftsmanship of the enslaved. It's like a "readymade".  These came from the crumbled foundation of the outhouse on the East St. property. I am happy to have found a way to use them.

Fire.Burn.Victoria series, cuts and burns on paper, 2015, La Vaughn Belle

 This is the beginning of a series of work based on the images from fretwork in the town of Frederiksted that was rebuilt after the 1878  Labor Revolt, aka "Fireburn". The cuts and burns in the papers use the two main tools of resistance used at the time.

Chaney Series_003 (we live in the fragments), 2015, La Vaughn Belle

The third in this series. I like working in this size, 48x60, but I think I want to go bigger!

Interview (video)

I was interviewed by one of my students, Denise S. Canton earlier this year for a photography class she was taking in Maryland, USA. If you have 30 minutes and want to more about my work and background check it out. I talk about earliest influences, my transition to becoming an artist and what's it's like to be an artist in the Caribbean. I also discuss some regrets and some challenges in sustaining a creative life.