Now I want to write about another design in this series. This one is for Maya Angelou. This woman was amazing, she did so many things in her life and made art out of nearly everything she did. Of course she is best known for being a writer of memoir and poetry. Her first book, I know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is a masterpiece and I recommend it to everyone. I could very nearly grasp, probably as close as possible for me, what it was like to be a black girl growing up in Arkansas and subject to astonishing and appalling racism. But she was also a dancer, an actress (she’s in the original Roots), a singer, a wise woman. And here is a picture of her I found which pretty much sums up, I think, who she is. Even the worst things that can happen to you can be made into art and life and you can still laugh with all your heart. It is a kind of fecundity.

I have called these Maya Angelou pieces, “Bride of Hurricanes, Shy as Magnolias.” My design is based on the imagery in three of her texts. The first is one of her poems called, “Woman Me.” It occurs to me just now that “Woman” could be a verb, a transitive verb, in the way “Mother” can be. Here is the poem.

The second text is from Letter to My Daughter, “We carry [the] accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias.” These two texts show a tension, a dichotomy, that comes up often in the depictions of Female Power. A kind of supernatural strength paired with a melting softness. The hurricane and the magnolia also share something else: the spiral form. The pinwheel quilt piece shape is another spiral reference. And quilts are often associated with Angelou’s life and work. (I could probably write a whole essay on how quilts relate to the life and work of Angelou. But here I would just like to say that if you haven’t looked closely at the quilts from Gee’s Bend, then stop right now and go look.)

The third text is about color. Here is an excerpt from “Ain’t That Bad?” in the same poetry collection as “Woman Me.”

“…
Dressing in purples and pinks and greens
Exotic as rum and Cokes
Living our lives with flash and style
Ain’t we colorful folks?
…”

This is obviously where I got the color scheme.

I imagined my design process on this as mirroring the riot of activity in Angelou’s life. I was always adding more and then trying to pull everything together. I kept exploding the grid. Things would get muddled and then I would have to untangle the layers and forge clarity on the field of energy, trying to summon an energy that is at the origin of a flower and of a hurricane. Perhaps Angelou felt something like this when she was pushing her life into one memoir after another? When I then decided to make a scarf design on the same subject, I tried to simplify things by keeping to three analogous colors and only one kind of magnolia.

 

Up to now I have been thinking of my scarf and shawl designs as commercial work, not as fine art. In fact, I have several kinds of work I do, including graphic design, and I try to keep these things separated from the fine art in my promotions, because, you know, art is so much more SERIOUS. However, with this new shawl project I really think the two are coming together, and the shawls ARE fine art. They involve the same kind of deep research and exploration of ideas that I have invested in my Pseudomorphs and Celestial Bodies.

SHAWL (definition)
a piece of fabric worn by women over the shoulders or head or wrapped around a baby.

Lately the shawl, or head scarf, has become a loaded object. It represents oppression, on the one hand, and a positive assertion of identity on the other. The shawl embodies modesty and utility. But most of all it is a woman’s garment and, as such, can represent a woman’s right to dress as she pleases. When we put on a garment we are re-presenting our bodies. (How appropriate it is that the shawl’s definition includes the wrapping of a baby, just as a birth mother’s body itself once wrapped her baby.) A garment always means something, but I believe our bodies themselves shouldn’t always mean something—our bodies ARE—and we have a right to BE here, wholly owned by ourselves. I have created these women’s garments inspired by the power of women, both human and mythological (or divine, depending on how you approach religion). In each I have tried not to represent the person, but to represent the attributes and message—the power—of the person (or spirit) in words and/or in images. I hope that putting on the shawls will be like putting on the power represented. Superman has his cape, and now, you can have a Female Power Shawl! Furthermore, a portion of the purchase price will go toward a resonant charity, so buying one of these shawls will not just give you super-powers, it will affect the world. (Just kidding about the super-powers!)

I made the first Female Power Shawl before I had the idea for the Female Power Shawl project. Pope Francis was coming to town and saying mass near my studio and I wanted to make some things for the audience of catholics in this part of town called the “Little Vatican,” near The Catholic University of America. I made a shawl and a scarf depicting the visual attributes of the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe: the starry mantle, the flames, the clouds, the roses. It was when I put the shawl around my own shoulders that I felt how one could be wrapped, physically, in an idea. You can see the Shawl, “La Guadalupana,” here.

Since then I have made two more designs and have many more in the works. I’ve asked friends and strangers about their female heroes and deities. The first design I finished, called “A Girl with a Book,” is in honor of Malala Yousafzai, the young woman who campaigned for girls’ education in Pakistan, was shot by a Taliban man, kept working for her cause, won the Nobel Peace Prize for her accomplishments (at 16!), and continues to work for every child’s right to an education. To design this shawl I did research on the visual culture of the Swat Valley, the region of Pakistan where Malala was born. I discovered that one of the recurring motifs in the wood carving of the area is based on a woman’s neck ring. The neck ring shape, a nearly-round crescent with outer-facing ends, is pre-islamic, and is thought by anthropologists to be a symbol of female power because of its similarity to the shape of a crescent moon. It persisted even after the coming of islam because a crescent is islamic as well. There are several versions, one is a double twist. Although the text I read suggested that the ends look like bird heads, I think they might just as well be serpent heads. The snake is also often a symbol of female power. (The Arts and Crafts of the Swat Valley: Living Traditions in the Hindu Kush, by Johannes Kalter, 1989.)

I built a neck ring shape from various materials because I was interested in experiencing the motif as a physical thing, not just as a drawing. I made a couple versions and they both seem a little magical when I hold them. One version was wrapped and the other was twisted. The twisted version looks much more like two snakes. This is the one I scanned and used in the shawl design.

The shape also made me think of two hands held out, cupped, as if holding water—or holding a book. So I drew a motif of hands in the neck ring shape holding a book. The little yellow leaf shapes could be leaves or flames, also two-lobed and opening out from a center. The text on the shawl reads: “Extremists have shown what frightens them most: a girl with a book.” This is a Malala quote used by Amnesty International. I like this sentence because, on the one hand, it is calling the Taliban cowards because they are afraid of a little girl and everyone knows that girls are weak and harmless [sic!]. On the other hand, it suggests that it really is a very powerful thing for a girl to reach into the world and seize knowledge for herself. They should be afraid! How can we possibly respect any ideology that relies on women being ignorant!

I also read Malala’s memoir, I Am Malala, which I recommend to everyone. She writes lovingly of her homeland. She holds fast to her moslem faith and describes how the Koran encourages women on their path to knowledge. She describes how the Taliban moved into her land and slowly won over people through rhetoric and intimidation. Then they started destroying schools and assassinating people. She held to her conviction that it is not a crime to seek an education. In this she was supported by her educator/activist father and her illiterate mother. The day that Malala was shot, in a school bus delivering her home from school, her mother was attending her own first reading lesson. How our daughters teach us! A portion of the proceeds from the sale of “A Girl with a Book” will go to support the Malala Fund, of course.