Lights, Sound, and Cultural Revelations

You can’t sit around and wait for somebody to say who you are. You need to write it and paint it and do it.
~Faith Ringgold.

By Betty Ann Brown
Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja and Dellis Frank are two artists who refuse to “sit around and wait for somebody to say who [they] are.” Instead, they firmly grasp their identities and fiercely manifest them in their creative work.

Adeola’s Sacred Imprints: Words of Wisdom dominates the space of Shoebox, with a large bark boat flanked by four totemic figures, a table populated by an array of smaller figurative totems, and dozens of cyanotypes suspended from wire clothes hangers. Inside the boat is a diagram of an African slave ship revealing an uncomfortably crowded group of Black men. (It is a well-known image: Betye Saar used it in her Dark Voyage assemblage.)

Anna Atkins (1799-1871) produced some of the first cyanotype images. Atkins used the camera-free process to produce bright blue depictions of British botanicals. In contrast, Adeola uses the cyanotype process to create pictorial fragments of her personal and cultural autobiography: the artist herself as a seated goddess, another of her dancing, an image of Kamala Harris with and African leader, and, once again, the slave ship.

Adeola reveals her fine aesthetic range as she flows between two-dimensional works (the north wall of the gallery is covered by dozens of cyanotypes fluttering on their hangers) and three-dimensional works (the tall tree-like totems with the ship, the smaller fetish-like statues on their altar-like table). Viewers are invited to enjoy the indigo hues of the cyanotypes as they visually investigate the ship alongside the references to the tradition of African amulets.

The subtle magic of Adeola’s cyanotype imprints contrasts with the rainbow range of intense color in Dellis Frank’s installation at Shoebox. Her Color Chimes are hung inside the gallery closet, crowded into the constricted interior space and wreathed in glittering black fabric. The chimes are truly multi-media: constructed of paper, fabric, yarn, and other materials, like pendant architectural ornaments. A color-changing light pulsates bellow them, giving the space a heady rhythm. It is like a glimpse into a raging discotheque, the light and color almost hallucinatory.

Although the chime colors can be seen as purely visual statements, rainbow colors also refer to LBGTQ politics and history. Dellis happens to be married to truly handsome man), but she is—like all of us in the Los Angeles art world—painfully aware of the bias and exclusion leveled at LBGTQ people in our culture. That being the case, we can think of her chimes as imagined musical instruments for a mythic LBGTQ disco.

The visual and emotional contrasts between Adeola and Dellis emphasize their creative differences. Yet, those differences are material and process based, while their similarities lie in the aesthetic revelation of self and culture in both artists’ glorious works.

Shoebox Projects
Closing reception Saturday September 21st 3-5pm PST