Xenobia Bailey

Xenobia Bailey (born 1955) is an American fine artist, designer, Supernaturalist, cultural activist and fiber artist best known for her eclectic crochet African-inspired hats[1] and her large scale crochet pieces and mandalas.[2]

Xenobia Bailey
Born
Sherilyn Bailey

1955 (age 67–68)
Seattle, Washington, United States
EducationUniversity of Washington
Known forFiber art

Early life

Born Sherilyn Bailey in Seattle in 1955, in the 80s she changed her name to Xenobia for the warrior queen of ancient Palmyra[3] and made her way to New York City. She began her professional life as a costume designer for the now defunct Black Arts/West and earned a BFA in Industrial Design from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1977.[1][4][5] Affirmative action took her to the University of Washington[3] where, she says, "the whole world opened up to me." She discovered ethnomusicology, the study of music and culture from around the world. She followed it with courses in tailoring and millinery at Seattle Central Community College.[3]

In the late 80s, she worked for the CETA program as an art instructor, which led her to meeting master needleworker Bernadette Sonona. It is here that Xenobia advanced her skills and learned how to create needleworks without the use of a pattern or template.[4]

Work
Funktional Vibrations, mosaic, 2016. At the 34th Street station

Bailey focuses on ancient African styles, reviving undocumented, non-commercial, engineered designs, artifacts and other cultural treasures from contemporary rural and urban homemakers. Influences on her work include economic culture and a wish to design experimental nature-based-futuristic, sustainable material culture in the aesthetic of funk for a skilled craft & masons labor force. She is concerned with social and economic development and the health and well-being for under-served rural communities that were socially erased during the Atlantic Slave Trade.[5] Her large scale crochet pieces and mandalas consist of colorful concentric circles and repeating patterns. Bailey's art work ranges from costumes, hats, wall pieces and newer digital images are "the far cry from the traditional shawls and doilies associated with the medium".[6] Her pieces are often connected to her ongoing project ''Paradise Under Reconstruction in the Aesthetic of Funk.''[2] Bailey's work strives to create a textile culture and aesthetic that African Americans were unable to develop because of slavery and reconstruction.[7][8]

"To be an artist and be able to create things – it's like fireworks every time you think about something", says Bailey. "I try to get energy and movement from something that is not moving at all."[6]

Bailey's technique, of mostly circular rows of single crochet, forms a fabric classified as tapestry crochet in flat, geometric, highly colored designs influenced by African, Chinese, and Native American and Eastern philosophies, with undertones of 1970s "Funk" aesthetic. Her work draws upon the Kongo Cosmogram, or Yowa, a symbol important to Kongo metaphysics and spiritual ceremonies.[9] Her signature stitch is a flowy line, as if it is dripping. She calls it the "liquid stitch".[3] Her hats have been featured in United Colors of Benetton ads, on The Cosby Show, and in the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing[10] (worn by Samuel L. Jackson as DJ Mister Señor Love Daddy).[11] She credits her shift from hats to walls to Chicago artist Nick Cave.[3] Bailey's piece, "Sistah Paradise Great Wall of Fire Revival Tent (Mandela Cosmic tapestry of energy flow)" was exhibited at Stux Gallery, Fall 2000. The piece was hand crocheted with cotton acrylic yarns, with 10' high x 5' diameter. In 2000 Bailey received the Creative Capital Award in the discipline of Visual Arts.[12]

In 2003, her designs were featured in an Absolut Vodka advertisement entitled "Absolut Bailey."[13] Bailey has been artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation in New York City. In an experimental collaboration sponsored by the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and the MIT Media Lab, Bailey crocheted with electroluminescent wire.[14] Her work has been exhibited at the Studio Museum of Harlem,[15] the Jersey City Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

As an addition to her ongoing project Paradise Under Reconstruction,[16] she created a hanging installation in 2006 called Mothership 1: Sistah Paradise's Great Walls of Fire Revival Tent. This piece was created to cover the topic of absent historical documentation for African enslavement in America.[2]

In September 2014, Bailey partnered with students from Boys & Girls High School in Brooklyn to design and produce furniture to furnish a home for the Historic Hunterfly Road Houses.[17] Sixty students, aged 14–17, designed three pieces for an imaginary couple moving into 21st century Brooklyn using recycled materials.[11] (Xenobia Bailey. (n.d.). Retrieved March 19, 2019, from http://www.abladeofgrass.org/fellows/xenobia-bailey/)

In 2016, Xenobia Bailey created a large-scale glass mosaic at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for the New York City Subway's 34th Street – Hudson Yards station.[18][19] She named the piece Funktional Vibrations.[20] Bailey crocheted the design for the mosaic; the Miotto Mosaic Art Studio then digitized it and translated it into the final mosaic.[21] That same year, she also participated in the SITE Santa Fe Biennial.[22]

Bailey was a 2018 Artist-in-Residence at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation in Charlotte, North Carolina.[23][24]

In 2020, Bailey unveiled a new public art mosaic entitled "Morning Stars," at St. Petersburg's new Pier District.[25]

2020 Bailey designed the public art work, permanently installed in the Grand Reading Room, in the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington DC,[26][27] The library was originally designed by German American Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1972.[27]

During the Summer of 2021 Bailey realized in The Winter Garden at Brookfield Place. Mothership was on view June 28 under her canopy entitled Functional Frequency Environment.[28]

Collections

Her work is in the permanent collections at Harlem's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,[29] the Allentown Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Arts, the Texas Fashion Collection, and in the Museum of Arts and Design.[29][30]

Selected exhibitions

Solo

Group
  • 2015: Xenobia Bailey (1955, Seattle) is one of the artists in the exhibition 'Fiber: Sculpture 1960–Present' in ICA Boston, from October 1 till January 4, 2015. The exhibition also has a catalog in print form.[36][37]
  • 2017: Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field, Museum of Arts and Design, New York City (October 24 - December 17, 2017)[38]
  • 2019: Vibration & Frequency Experiment Funktional Material Culture Design Lab, Seattle at Wa Na Wari[39]

Honors and awards

In 2000, Xenobia Bailey won a Creative Capital grant for her project, Paradise Under Reconstruction in the Aesthetic of Funk.[12] In 2017, Bailey won the Americans for the Arts Public Art Year in Review Award for her artwork Paradise Under Reconstruction in the Aesthetic of Funk: A Quantum Leap, Starting From The Top…!!! [40] In 2019, Bailey was one of the inaugural recipients of the BRIC Colene Brown Art Prize.[41]

References
  1. "Style Makers; Xenobia Bailey, African-Hat Designer". The New York Times. 19 August 1990. pp. A.38. Archived from the original on 16 February 2013. Retrieved 27 January 2013.
  2. "Mothership 1: Sistah Paradise's Great Walls of Fire Revival Tent". Brooklyn Museum. 2005. Archived from the original on 27 May 2023. Retrieved 27 January 2013.
  3. Graves, Jen (16 November 2011). "The Supernaturalist: Xenobia Bailey and How She Got That Way". The Stranger. Archived from the original on 28 June 2022. Retrieved 26 July 2023.
  4. Hassan, Salah M (1997). Gendered Visions: The Art of Contemporary Africana Women Artists. Trenton, New Jersey: Africana World Press. pp. 19–23. ISBN 9780865436190. OCLC 37157863.
  5. "Xenobia Bailey". Art in Embassies. US Department of State. Archived from the original on 29 June 2023. Retrieved 11 March 2017.
  6. Reed Miller, Rosemary E. (2002). Threads of Time, The Fabric of History: Profiles of African American Dressmakers and Designers, 1850-2002. Washington, D.C.: T&S Press. p. 153. ISBN 9780970971302. OCLC 172683699.
  7. Ruyak, Jacqueline (Summer 2009). "Xenobia Bailey: Revisiting Reconstruction". Surface Design Journal. 33 (4): 36–39. ISSN 0197-4483 – via Art Full Text.
  8. Wynn, Toni (1999). "This Work Meditative and Blessed". International Review of African American Art. 15 (4): 3–15. ISSN 1045-0920 – via Art Full Text.
  9. Gaskins, Nettrice (2016). "The African Cosmogram Matrix in Contemporary Art and Culture". Black Theology. 14: 28–41. doi:10.1080/14769948.2015.1131502. S2CID 147700011 – via Art Full Text.
  10. Otfinoski, Steven (2010). African Americans in the Visual Arts. Facts On File, Incorporated. pp. 11, 12. ISBN 9780816078400.
  11. "A 21st Century Urban Rhapsody in Reconstructive, Funky Design". The Brooklyn Reader. 3 October 2014. Archived from the original on 27 July 2023. Retrieved 11 March 2017.
  12. "Paradise Under Reconstruction in the Aesthetic of Funk". Creative Capital. 2000. Archived from the original on 3 June 2023. Retrieved 27 July 2023.
  13. Farrington. E., Lisa (2004). Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists. Oxford University Press, USA. pp. 253, 254. ISBN 019516721X.
  14. "Haystack and MIT Sponsor "Digital Dialogues"". Fiberarts. 29: 12. 2003 – via Art Full Text.
  15. "The Bearden Project". The Studio Museum in Harlem. Archived from the original on 17 March 2014. Retrieved 27 January 2013.
  16. "Xenobia Bailey". A Blade of Grass. Archived from the original on 31 May 2023. Retrieved 26 July 2023.
  17. "Xenobia Bailey in collaboration with Boys & Girls High School". Creative Time. Archived from the original on 2 May 2023. Retrieved 26 July 2023.
  18. Meier, Allison (15 September 2015). "Various Visions of the Future in NYC's First New Subway Station in 25 Years". Hyperallergic. Archived from the original on 14 June 2023. Retrieved 26 July 2023.
  19. Metropolitan Transportation Authority. "7 Line Extension". Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  20. Cook, Lauren (11 July 2016). "NYC subway art: See photos of stunning and thought-provoking artwork - 34th Street-Hudson Yards, Manhattan". AM New York. Archived from the original on 18 October 2016. Retrieved 3 September 2016.
  21. Czarnecki, John (2015). "Vibrant Mosaics Greet Visitors to the Newest New York Subway Entrance". Contract. 56: 112 – via Art Full Text.
  22. Davis, Ben (15 July 2016). "10 Great Artists to See at the SITE Santa Fe Biennial". Artnet News. Archived from the original on 1 July 2023. Retrieved 8 September 2020.
  23. "Xenobia Bailey". McColl Center for Art + Innovation. 2018. Archived from the original on 8 December 2022. Retrieved 29 July 2023.
  24. Infanzon, Vanessa (17 January 2018). "Wanted: Natural hair, crocheters, a choir, some gossip – for new work at McColl Center". The Charlotte Observer. Archived from the original on 21 January 2018. Retrieved 29 July 2023.
  25. Duffy, Maggie (4 July 2020). "Four Distinct Works of Art Revealed at the New St. Pete Pier". Tampa Bay Times. Archived from the original on 1 July 2023. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  26. Byck, Daniella (4 August 2020). "PHOTOS: Look Inside the MLK Library's $211 Million Renovation". Washingtonian. Archived from the original on 8 February 2023. Retrieved 29 July 2023.
  27. Kaiser, Laura Fisher (5 April 2022). "Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Only Public Library Project Gets a Refresh". Interior Design. Archived from the original on 24 February 2023. Retrieved 29 July 2023.
  28. "Xenobia Bailey in The Winter Garden at Brookfield Place in Summer 2021". GothamToGo. 11 June 2021. Archived from the original on 1 July 2023. Retrieved 31 July 2021.
  29. "Xenobia Bailey - craft artist". Essence. Vol. 26, no. 1. May 1995. p. 70. ISSN 0014-0880.
  30. "Xenobia Bailey - Zulu Queen Harvest Fire Coat". Museum of Arts and Design. Archived from the original on 28 July 2023. Retrieved 27 July 2023.
  31. "Exhibitions July 2001 - June 2002". Annual Report (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston): 42. 2002. ISSN 2380-5366. JSTOR 43481149.
  32. "The (RE)Possession of Xenobia Bailey". Pendulum. 16 June 2008. Archived from the original on 1 July 2023. Retrieved 3 March 2018.
  33. Taboada, Lilia (13 September 2017). "MTArt". The Studio Museum in Harlem. Archived from the original on 1 July 2023. Retrieved 3 March 2018.
  34. "MTA - Arts & Design | NYCT Permanent Art". MTA. Archived from the original on 7 July 2023. Retrieved 3 March 2018.
  35. Lefrak, Mikaela; Turner, Tyrone (23 July 2020). "The MLK Library Will Reopen This Fall with Recording Studios, a Slide, and Rooftop Views". DCist. Archived from the original on 14 August 2020. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  36. Fiber : sculpture 1960-present. Porter, Jenelle,, Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, Mass.),, Wexner Center for the Arts,, Des Moines Art Center. Munich. 2014. ISBN 9783791353821. OCLC 878667652.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  37. "Xenobia Bailey". Arena for Contemporary African, African-American and Caribbean Art. 25 September 2014. Archived from the original on 12 August 2018. Retrieved 3 March 2018.
  38. "Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field". Museum of Arts and Design. 2017. Archived from the original on 27 March 2023. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  39. "Xenobia Bailey". Wa Na Wari. Retrieved 2020-11-03.
  40. Lindsay, Erika (19 June 2017). "ARTS wins National Award for artwork dedicated to Black innovation and joy". Art Beat. Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. Archived from the original on 1 July 2023. Retrieved 3 November 2020.
  41. "Inaugural Recipients of BRIC's $100,000 Colene Brown Art Prize Announced". Artforum. 2 October 2019. Archived from the original on 2 July 2023. Retrieved 3 November 2020.

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