Artist Books | finding-aid

God's Battle Axe (center fold)

[Hurston, Z.N. Correspondence ], Zora Neale Hurston Papers, George A

Finding Aid

God's Battle Axe (center fold)

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Never Forget No.1

"Never Forget" no. 1 is an edition of 10 works. Each number serves as a visual response to crimes committed against black bodies, both past and present as well as those persons whose lives will forever impact our society.

Materials: wood, fibers, linoleum relief print, paper, paint

Adinkra Symbols
Odo Nnyew Fie Kwan - "Love never loses its way home"
Sankofa- "Learn from the past"

Never Forget No.2

'Tell Us How You Really Feel
Art As A Tool To
Communicate Complex Emotions'

Drexel University, Rincliffe Gallery
"Exhibition from December 1, 2022 through June 1, 2023. Tell Us How You Really Feel! is an exhibition of student, faculty and alumni artwork examining the aforementioned concepts. Contributing artists are asked to consider the following prompt: "Create a visual representation of a time in your life when you felt emotion that was too hard to put into words."

Collections:
Harvard University
University of Puget Sound
Oberlin College
Scripps College
University of Georgia Athens, UGA

Finding Aid

In 2016 I was sifting through hundreds of archival collection materials from the W.W. Law Collection, a collection dedicated to prominent Civil Rights leader Westley Wallace Law (1923–2002). I began to contemplate the challenges that patrons often encounter when conducting archival research for the first time. Finding Aid is my creative response to sharing stories and connections pertaining to local Civil Rights activist in Savannah utilizing QR code technology and digitized primary sources.

Wood, cotton fabric, metal

Collections:

Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Temple University

Grinnell College

University of Delaware

Ohio University

Bainbridge Island Museum of Art

Voyage

'Voyage'
Voyage intends to link viewers to history through type, text, and image. I want the wind sails, artist book, and poem to take viewers on a visual journey of the Middle Passage, the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean and to the Americas. The symbolism of the prints corresponds to lines in the poem, which I wrote while I was in graduate school. Here, you can see a family on a hazardous journey across the sea, leading to the separation of a mother and her child and the continued journey of the son away from the warmth of his mother and homeland to unwelcome shores.

Collections:
University of Delaware
University of Georgia Athens (UGA)
Ohio University

God's Battle Axe

God’s Battle Axe, pays homage to Zora Neale Hurston’s inspiration and creative process for her last unpublished manuscript ‘Herod the Great’. Through research of the Zora Neale Hurston Papers, (in particular, Hurston’s sketch book for ‘Herod’) at George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, and published works that reveal the influences of religion in her early life, this work is an ode to Zora Neale Hurston’s courage to deviate from her accepted canonical work.
Through the use of materiality, the application of multiple mediums, and the conception of religious reliquaries, this work reimagines Zora’s vision for the environment, historic setting, and years of research resulting in her six volume manuscript for ‘Herod the Great’. “ I am trying something more difficult than ever before.” [Hurston,Z.N. Handwritten Letter], Zora Neale Hurston Papers, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida

Size:
Dimensions: 7” x 10” x 6” H

Weight:
4.5 pounds

Media:
Wood, concrete, caulk, pigments (water color, pen and ink, acrylic), textile (velvet), faux ostrich feathers, artifacts (vintage brooch), glass (mosaic tiles), linoleum, printmaking ink, paper, black and white archival photo prints.

Lebenslauf

("lay- ben- lauf")
(German) A written account of one's life.

Peter Oliver (1766-1810) was born into slavery in 1766 in King and Queen County, Virginia. In 1786, the Moravian Church bought Oliver and he lived as an enslaved man until he earned and saved his own money through his pottery craft. In writing about his life, Peter Oliver noted that he was so diligent, in fact, that he was able to “𝘣𝘶𝘺 𝘩𝘪𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘭𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺.” Shortly after freeing himself, he married a free woman named Christina Bass in 1802 and established his own household on a farm four blocks north of Salem square. Oliver and Bass had five children.

-Old Salem Museum and Gardens

Timbuktu

Timbuktu, is a concertina artist book that visually expresses my response to select digitized manuscript pages housed at the Mamma Haidara commemorative library and the Library of Cheick Zayni Baye of Boujbeha, in Timbuktu, Mail. Timbuktu utilizes the book format as a contemporary art form to celebrate the importance of Timbuktu as a center of knowledge, book making, literacy and scholarship during its apogee. Embedded in Timbuktu is a QR code linking viewers to select digitized manuscript pages courtesy of the Library of Congress Exhibition, Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu.

Sauda Mitchell