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Political Change
Maya Freelon, who was featured at the Smithsonian’s By the
People festival, discusses the role of artists in society
Maya Freelon’s Reciprocity Respite & Repass at the Smithsonian Arts and
Industries Building (Courtesy of Halcyon)
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BY JACOBA URIST
For more than a decade, artist Maya Freelon has created striking abstract
sculptures and installations from tissue paper and water stains. Her technique
— letting water gently drip so the paper’s color bleeds organically — arose from
happenstance, when, as an MFA student, she discovered a stack of old tissue
paper in her grandmother’s basement.
As for Freelon, however, there is perhaps no better introduction to her than the
late poet Maya Angelou, who described the tissue paper artwork as “visualizing
the truth about the vulnerability and power of the human being.”
When did you discover your medium, working with tissue paper and
water?
So one day, I went to the basement and discovered this tissue paper that was
water damaged. It must have been a leaky pipe or something because it was
right under the bathroom. There was a watermark from a constant drip, which
had to be years ago, on this rainbow pack of colored tissue paper.
What was so powerful about the visual manifestation of this leak for you?
The watermark is a familiar sign to most people in the entire world. It just
means: water was once here. You can see that in a lake that has receded. You
can see it in the desert. You can see it in a rainforest, creek bed, even the
Grand Canyon. It’s a marker of time or evaporation — a familiar sign to all
human beings. I felt the commonality and a kind of interconnectedness of our
humanity. This beautiful little accident sparked a world of discovery for me.
And three weeks after I found the stained tissue paper, Hurricane Katrina wiped
out the Gulf Coast. So, I’m finding a parallel between water moving color literally
and water as destruction. Seeing the images in the media and simultaneously
watching water push ink out of tissue paper, I was struck by how a constant drip
of water can dilute pure color— and I reflected on the fragility of life. I also
questioned the hierarchy of art materials. My grandmother used tissue paper in
elementary school art classrooms, and there I was, discovering and using tissue
paper for my graduate art class.
Did the fragility of tissue paper require copious trial and error?
When I first used the tissue paper I didn’t know what do with it. I tried to mimic
the water mark and couldn’t. I was pouring carefully, using a watercolor brush,
trying to get it right. But it didn’t work. It just looked like a mess. So then I got a
water balloon, and put a pin in it, and let it slowly drop on the tissue paper,
simulating a drip that might come from a leaky faucet. That’s when I realized, oh
my gosh: it’s not a steady stream. It’s a drip process that pushes the ink to the
outer edges. At that moment, I also thought about middle school. I always knew
I was going to be an artist, and I remember looking up at the dropped ceiling
and often there’s a brown water stain on the tile. In my boredom as a child, I
remember thinking, what’s happening up there?
I think about how brown paper in front of buildings that are getting renovated
gets wet and leaves a stain. You see it also in dried up puddles. It’s just so
beautiful to me. It reminds me of the macro and the microscopic.
When I started, I was feeling a little self-conscious about tissue paper. It’s fun to
experiment in art school, but the point is you want to know how to make a living
as an artist. You want your art to sell, and the ephemeral nature is part of my
work.
Tell me about the work you presented at the By The People Festival ?
The great thing about festival is that they specifically sought artists that have
interactive components to their art. And what’s great about tissue paper is I can
work with anyone from under 1 year old to over 100 years old. I use the most
simple materials so anybody can interact and join in. I’ve done collaborative
tissue quilt-making a few times, once at the North Carolina Museum of Art. You
sit down next to somebody and you start looking at bits of torn tissue paper,
which is interesting because of all the colorful stains. You pick your favorite
color and you start connecting the papers with just a simple glue stick—
Elmer’s. My materials are not a surprise or a secret. You’re sitting; you’re
building, piece by piece. And as you get bigger, you bump into your neighbor on
the right, your neighbor on the left, your neighbor at the table in front of you.
You are joining and talking because the action is pretty simple, like a quilting
bee.
Your mind kind of shuts off and it’s almost like a form of mediation. Some
people are very quiet and work very meticulously. Some people are sloppier
and just talking. But once you get in the groove of things, you have permission
for your mind to take off a while, doing this task that is repetitive. But it’s also
about that unity, that togetherness, that strength and power of joining together
as opposed to being one piece flying off by itself.
What role should artists take in times of political and cultural division?
Artists are always at the forefront of revolution. They are the ones that push the
buttons that make us stop and say, this isn’t right. They spark dialogue. We
aren’t held back by, what will my town think? Am I going to get fired? Is this
okay? Your job as an artist is to utilize your freedom to speak your mind and
inspire. And at the same time, be ready for backlash, or the people that you are
going to anger.
For me, my place of peace is always back in the commonality of us all. We can
all agree that this is a watermark, right? I dislike you and you dislike me, can we
find some common ground? Can we agree that this piece of art is beautiful?