Artist of the Month

Click here to return to directory of artists.

---

July 2008: Creativity & Arts Spotlight

Nancy VanDevender: "Picking Cotton...Mississippi to Detroit"

For many people, the phrase “picking cotton” summons images of African slaves toiling against their will on the plantations of the American South. In the Visual Arts Gallery’s exhibition “Picking Cotton…Mississippi to Detroit,” that deeply rooted conjuring from our national psyche has been expertly woven by Nancy VanDevender into a multifarious installation of staged interiors that are at once beautiful and haunting, historical and fictional.

This installation is the culmination of VanDevender’s research that began as a look into the role of cotton and slavery in the historical and decorative evolution of the ruffle.  Looking at how Victorian and European influences filtered into the Harlem Renaissance and how that era paved the way for the Civil Rights Movement, she focused on rearranging and recreating relationships through character development and set construction.  Comprised of layer upon layer of furniture, photographs, videos, hand-drawn tattoos, intricately designed wallpaper, and a racially diverse cast of characters that includes the artist herself, VanDevender’s “parlours” offer a glimpse of her life journey from a pre-Civil Rights childhood in Meridian, Miss., through her recent completion of the MFA program at Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit.

“As a white Southerner in the 40s and 50s, my primary experience of African Americans was through their subservient roles in domestic settings,” explained Nancy VanDevender during a recent lecture at the Visual Arts Gallery. “Later, my graduate school research introduced me to James Van Der Zee and Henry Clay Anderson, two African American artists whose vibrant photographs of black Americans during the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement profoundly influenced me and opened my eyes to a previously unfamiliar world.” 

That shared history is enshrined within VanDevender’s interiors, which draw visitors into spaces filled with lush wallpaper and furnishings. Once inside, close examination of the wallpaper reveals an elaborate collage of fabric, photographs and hand-drawn tattoos primarily depicting elements of cotton picking and processing. Large, vivid photographs of the same tattoos, this time depicted as body ornamentation on models, adorn the walls alongside intimate prints of two women grooming themselves at a dressing table. Every detail carries its own history as well as the history of a specific time, and collectively they tell a story that becomes increasingly resonant for the viewer.

During the past year her work has been shown at the Anton Art Center in Mount Clemens, Michigan, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, PA, and at Daimler Chrysler, PotsdamerPlatz in Berlin, Germany. She is currently part of the Studio Artist program at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Of “Picking Cotton” VanDevender said: “My installation at Emory is documentation of my continuing personal journey of heightened awareness through my research, and seeks to accomplish what I believe is the primary role of art: to offer the viewer a backdrop for reflection and change.

Material Provided by Mary Catherine Johnson, Visual Arts Program
Edited by Jessica Moore, Communications Coordinator
Emory College Center for Creativity & Arts at Emory

Return to Top

---