Description:
Installation of 24 panels that include pages from W.E.B. Du Bois's play Darkwater dipped in aqueous mixture of furnace black watercolor, and gold acrylic paint, adhered to hard-board panels.
Label Text:
Exhibition Label, 40 Years / 40 Artists, January 22–March 8, 2015:
Tim Rollins and Angel Abreu (a member of K.0.S.) brought their talents to Springfield’s Renaissance School where they collaborated with middle school students to create a series of images on original pages of Du Bois’ book Darkwater. Discussions and reading aloud sections of the book helped each student to write their own ‘Credo’. As Rollins says, “All throughout Darkwater, Du Bois insists that art is a form of perpetual prayer and patience. He believes in educating children towards beauty, truth, even grandeur. Education is ‘the problemof problems.’ This son of Great Barrington generates a lyrical essay and instrumental poetry”. - Loretta Yarlow
Made at the Renaissance School, Springfield, MA, with students: Dawell Bautista, Alexandria Belhumeur, Jaqueline Clark-Harris, Korey Collazo, Michael DeAngelo, Cervante Golden, Marcus Martinez, Michael Mascaro, Damahya Mongroo, Tracy Nguyen, Roderick Sellars, Alice Swan, Cora Swan, Mercy Togba, Kassandra Velez.
Artist's statement:
Of all of the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois what draws us to his Darkwater?
Over ninety years ago, W.E.B. Du Bois writes of being born by a golden river in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, a mother with a face of dark shining bronze, a tall black landlord with golden earrings.
Du Bois believes in a "God who made of one blood all nations that do dwell on earth." All throughout Darkwater he insists that art is a form of perpetual prayer and patience. He believes in educating children towards beauty, truth, even grandeur. Education is "the problem of problems." This son of Great Barrington generates a lyrical essay and instrumental poetry.
Again, what's the attraction to the visage, life, legacy and model of Du Bois? Maybe it's because as a young scholar on his summers off at Fisk University he taught poor kids at the Wheeler School in Wilson County in rural Tennessee. Maybe this was the simple but revolutionary learning experience that changed his life and predestined his future thought and activism.
He writes of "The Immortal Child" and the life and music of a Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and soon we are often playing a recording of the "American Negro Melodies" in our studio while working.
Golds, furnace black rivers, eternal flowing, movement, veils, baptism, chance and, always, Patience. We study, admire and emulate Du Bois, but, moreover, we feel him.
We find ourselves in March of 2013 visiting the Renaissance School in Springfield, Mass. and a diverse group of 6th, 7th and 8th grade students. In a brightly-lit classroom we are all together reading Darkwater together beginning with the great "Credo". The young participants then write their own personal Credos. Then they illustrate them.
Soon we are literally baptizing pages rent from a first edition of Darkwater deeply embossed in old letterpress and golden with 93 years of age. One by one, each young artist dips a page they have personally selected in a pool of furnace black ink laced with gold pigment. What happens happens… and what is happening? A painting that painted itself ─ something supernatural. It's an old-fashioned New England séance with all of us focused together at the table. Art is our medium. It's not long before the fiercely loving ghost of W.E.B. Du Bois has been summoned and is fully present in a Springfield public school.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=UM+2013.8.1-24 |
