سونيا كلارك
סוניה קלארק

Iterations

source: sonyaclark

I was born in Washington, DC to a psychiatrist from Trinidad and a nurse from Jamaica. I gained an appreciation for craft and the value of the handmade primarily from my maternal grandmother who was a professional tailor. Many of my family members taught me the value of a well-told story and so it is that I value the stories held in objects.

I hold an MFA (Cranbrook Academy of Art), a BFA (Art Institute of Chicago), and a BA in psychology (Amherst College) and a high school diploma from the Sidwell Friends School in DC. I have had the privilege of learning the craft of thinking through making from many makers throughout my travels. My work has been exhibited in over 250 museums and galleries in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, Australia, and throughout the USA. I have been able to pursue my studio practice because of generous honors and opportunities such as a Pollock-Krasner Award, a Rockefeller Foundation Residency in Italy, a Red Gate Residency in China, a Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship, a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship, a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, an Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Award, a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship in Italy, and most recently as a United States Artist Fellow.

Currently, I chair the Department of Craft/Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. The department has been ranked by US News and World Reports as #4 in Fiber, #5 in Glass, #10 in Metals and #12 in Clay. Overall, VCUarts is ranked nationally as the #1 public university in the arts. Formerly, I was a Baldwin-Bascom Professor of Creative Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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source: iraaamuseumhamptonuedu
or more than two decades, artist Sonya Clark has been obsessed with hair. No, she does not wear a weave. Rather, she’s fascinated with the infinite sculptural possibilities suggested by the squiggly lines emanating from black folks’ heads. Now, as chair of Virginia Commonwealth University’s craft/material studies department and recipient of prestigious art prizes, Clark is making headlines of her own.
Sonya Clark is one of the few contemporary artists that draw from an interest in African American hair to create both life-like and fanciful art works. She uses the hair theme to address African American race and identity issues.
Clark became a fiber artist because she was interested in the cultural meaning of textiles: the manipulation of fibers into practical and often aesthetic forms. This interest led Clark to consider what the first textile art form in history might be. Her answer: hairdressing. “I grew up braiding my hair and my sister’s hair, so in one sense, like many black women, I had been preparing to be a textile artist for a very long time,” Clark says.
Clark’s interest in West African cultures also stems back to her childhood. Growing up in Washington, D.C., she lived across the street from the home of the ambassador of Benin. “Many Saturdays in the 1970s, my sister and I would go across the street to play with their children. Inevitably we would land in the sacred space between the women’s or older girls’ knees,” Clark recalls. “We would emerge with elaborate, fantastic, sculptural hairstyles. After hours of being in the company of these wonderful, warm women, we would return home with our heads honored by their works of art.”
While Clark was a student at Amherst College, she made a big decision that many black women struggle with: the big chop. She decided to cut her shoulder-length, relaxed hair and began wearing her hair in a short, natural style. Although she enjoyed the practicality of her new hair and loved her new style, the haircut also left her feeling that she was missing out on the special, woman- to-woman, sharing, caring and gossip that comes with regular trips to the hair salon.
Clark’s parents gave her a trip to West Africa as a gift when she graduated from Amherst with a B.A. in psychology. In Africa, she learned how to weave and dye traditional textiles such as kente, adire and korogho. Upon her return, she worked a few years and saved money to go to art school; she wanted to combine psychology, art and cultural history into one pursuit.
In the BFA program at the Art Institute of Chicago, Clark researched the traditions of Yoruba regal caps and gowns and other African headdresses. (She had also researched headdresses while at Amherst.) “I manifested that research into art work at the Art Institute under the guidance of my teacher, friend, and mentor, Nick Cave; and in graduate school at Cranbrook Academy of Art with Gerhardt Knodel.” In recent years, Nick Cave’s work has exploded onto the mainstream art scene. Clark learned that in Yoruba culture, as in many places throughout the African Diaspora, the head is a sacred place. The people of Yoruba see the head as the site of the soul. When styling their hair, they are more concerned with ritual than vanity. Their hairdresses are more like altars than fashion. This concept helped guide the direction of Clark’s work. Her mature body of work includes imaginary hats and head coverings as well as rendering of hair styles.

Clark’s first major gallery exhibition, Parted, Plaited, and Piled, was at the Leedy Voulkos Gallery in Kansas City, MO, in 1998. Art historian Jacqueline Francis interviewed Clark for a review of the show in a 1998 issue of the International Review of African American Art. During the interview, Clark said that her work is “about woman power.” She readily draws “connections between women and life’s energies, from the miracle of birth to magnificent hairstyles,” observed Francis.

In 2001 Clarkwas among a handful of contemporary artists cited in “The Culture of Hair Culture” essay by Juliette Harris in the book, Tenderheaded: A Comb-Bending Collection of Hair Stories.

“Kink’s acute, complicated curl makes the hair springy and elastic, texturious and thick—qualities perfectly suited for sculpture,” writes Harris in the intro to the piece. “Of course kink can be challenging—it will grab on itself like Velcro and make the most intricate knots known to humanity. But the challenge of animated kink has been the incentive to produce art!” Sonya Clark has brilliantly met that challenge!

For an exhibit at the Museum of Artand Design, Second Lives Remixing the Ordinary (September 27, 2008-February 15, 2009), organized by Lowery S. Sims, Clark repurposed combs to make an 11-foot-high portrait of Madame C. J. Walker. The piece is amazing because, without the addition of any other materials, the combs formed a strong likeness of this pioneer of African American hair care.

Clark is currently working on a second, large portrait of Madame C. J. Walker for a commission in Indianapolis that will be installed later this year. With three upcoming solo exhibits in South Carolina, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, she also is developing the Hair Craft Project. With this project she will be working with hairdressers in the creation of artworks that reside in the worlds between contemporary art and hairstyling.

Sonya Clark’s artwork has been exhibited in over 250 museums and galleries in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, Australia and throughout the United States. She has also received many honors and awards for exceptional work. These include the Pollock-Krasner award, a Rockefeller Foundation Residency in Italy, a Red Gate Residency in China, and a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship in Italy.

In 2011, she was named a USA Glasgow Fellow from United States Artists and awarded a $50,000 unrestricted grant. As she has done with her other monetary awards, Clark has donated some of the grant money to local art programs to help future generations of artists. .
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source: ctartscene

A work like Sonya Clark’s “Iterations” is an example of how meaning must and can be teased out of these pieces. “Iterations” is a floor installation made up of hundreds of black plastic combs. Fastened together, the combs fan out from the wall like the spreading branches of a tree or its roots, the tool evoking the object worked upon. It inspires a plethora of associations: linguistic, cultural, visual. On the cultural level, the installation brings to mind the nature of hair as a cultural signifier, both because it uses combs but also because it looks in some ways like an upside-down Afro hairstyle. By suggesting the notion of “roots,” it layers further meanings: hair roots, the roots of trees, the notion of heritage and the reggae gloss on “roots” as signifying authenticity.
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source: manzardcafe

Hogy mit lehet kezdeni a fésűkkel fésülködésen és hátvakaráson kívül? Sonya Clark amerikai művész például szobrokat, installációkat készít belőlük. Ez az első meglepetés után akkor válik igazán értékelhetővé, ha egy fokkal több figyelmet szentelünk az elsőre hülyeségnek hangzó dolognak. A Virginiában élő szobrász lenyűgöző alkotásokat készít a több száz, gyakran több ezer vékony fogú fekete műanyag fésű segítségével, a folytatásban be is bizonyítom az igazamat…

A washingtoni születésű, művészeti diploma mellett pszichológusi végzettséggel is rendelkező művész figyelemre méltó munkái (nem csak a poszt témájául szolgáló „The Comb Series” című sorozatban található alkotások) több mint 250 múzeumban és galériában kerültek már kiállításra Európában, Afrikában, Ázsiában, Dél-Amerikában, Ausztráliában, és az egész Egyesült Államokban.