'Creation Story' Evolves On Fabric

Artist tells nearly forgotten past in distinctive process

By Dorothy Shinn
Beacon Journal art & architecture critic

Today, many of us will sit glued to our TV sets as we wait to see on whom the Oscars will be bestowed, and to which among all the stories told the golden statue will be awarded.

We all have stories, some from our childhood, some from adulthood and some from our old age. Many of them are even good enough to write down. But not all of us have the focus and talent to make those stories into works of art, nor do we all realize that stories don't always get told in books or at the movies.

Sometimes stories get told in paint, line and figure. And sometimes stories, magnificent stories, get told in the unique and unmatched way one individual puts odd, old and unconventional materials together.

The Akron Art Museum is displaying the work of such a talent in an exhibit that reveals the focus, energy and sense of mission needed to compose memories into incredible, three-dimensional, multimedia narratives that have thrilled art lovers since the early 1980s.

Through April 5, the museum is exhibiting Along Water Street: New Work by Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, a mixed-media ''creation story'' pieced together from 1984 to 2007, based on tales she'd heard from her Uncle Alvin from the time she could first remember (at age 3 in 1943) until his death in 1990.

Organized by the Columbus Museum of Art, the exhibit reflects Robinson's memories of now-lost neighborhoods in Columbus along the Scioto River, as well as the universal themes of migration, community and family reminiscences.

She has stitched these stories together with others and her own belief in evolution, using her distinctive layering process, combining rags, buttons, shells and other found objects with her own drawings and paintings on handmade paper.

The Akron Art Museum, the site of Robinson's first solo museum show in 1987, is the first stop on the four-museum tour (all in Ohio) of this exhibit, which consists of 12 rag paintings, one watercolor and a form unique to Robinson that she calls ''RagGonNon,'' or artwork that just ''keeps on ragging on and on.''

The RagGonNon in this exhibit is a 60-foot-long cloth and mixed-media work encrusted with buttons, beads, men's ties, sashes and scarves, handmade dolls and spirit packets, and at least one long skinny item that closely resembles a shed snakeskin.

These pieces take years to research, assemble and create, because they continue to evolve in response to others' responses to them. This particular RagGonNon began in 1984 and expresses themes of creation, discovery, acceptance and community.

The exhibit reconstructs the history of the largely forgotten Columbus neighborhood called Water Street.

Uncle Alvin was Alvin Frederick Zimmerman, Aminah's mother's oldest sibling and only brother. His memories were in turn based on the stories he heard from his great-uncle Bill Taylor, who owned a bait shop on Water Street in an area that is now in the heart of downtown Columbus.

This area along the Scioto River was inundated during the Flood of 1913, the same flood that destroyed the Ohio & Erie Canal, one of the worst natural disasters in Ohio's history.

''In 1938, Water Street was renamed Marconi Boulevard, and after that the Water Street community was completely forgotten,'' said Allison Tillinger Schmid, Akron Art Museum assistant curator.

''Uncle Alvin's stories are combined with stories she looked up in the Columbus Library, plus stories that are more urban folklore. Uncle Alvin told stories of Native Americans greeting Africans in the 1200s in a place called Chipo Village. She couldn't find any reference to that village existing in the Ohio Valley area, but she uses it anyway.

''She goes back and forth in time, using a technique called Sankofa, which means looking to the past in order to move forward.''

Robinson's RagGonNon has the mixture of observation and oral history similar to that found in the Bayeux Tapestry, where closely examined vignettes lie cheek by jowl with lavishly embroidered fancies. For Robinson, however, Water Street is no fancy, but a metaphor for the larger story of African-Americans migrating to and from the Ohio Valley.

Her memories, her knowledge of and loyalty to her community and appreciation of the past have driven her to record these stories in a way that causes all of us to want to listen, to remember, to put down and pass on our own stories.

That, of course, is only one aspect of our attraction to this work. Visitors interested in working with fabric have been particularly responsive to this exhibit, as have those who are intrigued by artworks made up of unconventional materials.

The watercolor and the rag paintings have been framed, whereas the RagGonNon has been ''skied,'' hung in one continuous course above them.

Just as there are many layers of materials, methods and perspectives in her work, there are many ways of appreciating it.

Students from Akron's Miller South School for the Visual and Performing Arts, for instance, have borrowed Robinson's RagGonNon format to create their own project, One South High: Collaborative Works by Miller South Students Inspired by the Art of Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, which is on display in the Akron museum's Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation Gallery through March 22.

These youngsters and others who want to discuss Robinson's work will be able to do so in person when she gives a free lecture from 2 to 3 p.m. March 22 at the museum, along with the Columbus Museum of Art's Carole Genshaft and the Akron museum's Barbara Tannenbaum.

In an interview last year with Genshaft, Robinson explained the RagGonNon in this show.

''The white cloth with stitching that begins this RagGonNon is a Memory Map that has not yet been fully designed, but the voices are beginning to take shape, crossing all the boundaries of the universe,'' Robinson said. ''The voices of humanity are being shaped by God. I have tried to show the migratory flux of people going back and forth in time and the evolution of these communities.

''I show the people nestled in the Ohio Valley peering out as if to reach out to a new dawn, a new beginning.

''It is also about the system of Black Laws that made African-Americans invisible, even though we helped to build the country. . . . I have also included the Farmlands, Mount Vernon Avenue and the communities. From all these places, the ancestors' voices emerge, and they are still emerging.''

In addition to the extensive amount of work that focuses on Columbus, Robinson has created other narrative series based on the people and places she has visited, such as her residencies in Kenya, Senegal, Egypt, Israel and Chile, and more recently, Italy and Peru.

Her work reflects not only the formal training she received at the Columbus Art School (now the Columbus College of Art and Design), but also the traditional skills — papermaking, needlework — passed down to her by the elders of her family.

Robinson was a 2004 recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called Genius Grant. The Columbus Museum of Art is developing a permanent center devoted to the study of her work.

Western Reserve PBS, in collaboration with the Akron Art Museum, has produced a documentary about Robinson that includes insightful interviews with the artist, who talks about the stories and experiences behind her works, as well as the teachers and students who created the Miller South project.

The program is available at http://www.westernreservepublicmedia.org and is being played continuously in the Akron museum's video box, along with a video on photographer Edward Weston.

''One's life does not begin with oneself,'' Robinson says at the beginning of her video. ''I stand on their shoulders, their stories, their gifts, and they allow me to continue the work.''

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Dorothy Shinn writes about art and architecture for the Akron Beacon Journal. Send information to her at the Akron Beacon Journal, P.O. Box 640, Akron, OH 44309-0640 or dtgshinn@neo.rr.com.

Taken From Ohio.com

The Bayeux Tapestry

Because of William I of England's victory in the 1066 Battle of Hastings, he was known as William the Conqueror. His previous moniker was William the Bastard because he was an illegitimate child of Robert I, the Duke of Normandy.

He had two other brothers to his mother, Herleva, both of which from other fathers. He succeeded his father in 1035 at a young age of eight. King Henry I of France knighted William, who was then only 15-years-old.

From then, he became a formidable leader and a strong warrior. When he was 19-years-old, he had already successfully defended Normandy from invasion and rebellion. Even Henry I himself felt envious of William's power and tried to invade Normandy, but the attempts failed.

When England's Edward the Confessor died, William felt he was the rightful successor to his throne. For one, it was said the Edward had promised him the throne when he visited London in 1052.

Also, Harold was said to have pledged alliance to William when he came to Normandy in 1064, two years before the Battle of Hastings. Harold was knighted by William after they successfully defeated Brittany's Conan II. Feeling betrayed by the late Edward and the newly-crowned Harold, William, with a fleet of ships and a formidable armada, went to England to fight.

This account is clearly illustrated in the Bayeux Tapestry. In the last panels of the Bayeux Tapestry, it was shown that the Normans had the upper hand of the battle. The Normans, as illustrated in the tapestry, killed Harold's brothers.

It also showed Bishop Odo, William's half-brother, fighting along side William's armada. In a panel, William fell from his horse but was very much alive and still able to fight. He then raised his helmet and encouraged his men to continue fighting, after which it was shown that Harold was defeated.

There were at least three figures in the tapestry that illustrated how Harold died, making the cause of his death vague when using the Bayeux Tapestry as basis. On one scene, Harold had an arrow sticking out in his eye, while another figure ha Harold speared with a spear.

There was another figure with legs hacked off which was presumed to be Harold. Although it is not clear, how Harold died (either he died of any of these causes, or he experienced all three fates), what was clear was that William and the Normans had won.

While the last section of the Bayeux Tapestry was said to be lost, it is assumed that this missing section deals with the coronation of William after he made the English magnates submit to him.

The Bayeux Tapestry is a work-of-art and tells a historic event in 77 panels. These panels are woven into wall hangings for individual hanging in the home or schools, to educate the children. The original Bayeux tapestry is 230' long and 20" high.

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Decorate your home and walls with Bayeux tapestries, which is considered the most unique of wall hangings, and enhance the beauty of your home. With home décor like wall hangings tapestry, the house becomes modern and graceful and gives the home a feeling of warmth. Tapestry wall hangings are treated as precious interior decoration pieces and appreciated throughout the world due to its exceptionally dazzling artwork.

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Tapestrycatalogue.com provides a widespread assortment of Bayeux tapestries and medieval tapestries which are very chic for interior home decoration. These tapestries are produced in Europe on Jacquard loom and ultimately given the finishing touches by hand.

The themes of medieval tapestries which are obtained in the present market include 11th century historical masterpieces of Mathilde, Battle of Hastings, William the conqueror and Duke of Normandy and much more. The length of the Bayeux tapestry embroidery is approximately 20”tall and 230ft long.

The Bayeux tapestry through its images reveals the story of the events leading unto and including the battle of Hastings that took place on October 14th 1066.

The Bayeux Tapestries also preserved the fame of the Norman downfall of England and the stage show of Harold of Wessex and Duke William of Normandy for more than 900 years. Generally, the Bayeux Tapestry is attributed to William the conqueror’s wife Matilda and commissioned by William's half-brother, Bishop Odo of Bayeux for display in the Bayeux Cathedral. According to some intellectuals, the Englishmen from Canterbury stitched the Bayeux Tapestry in the real sense.

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The Bayeux Tapestry - A Brief History

Certainly one of the most magnificent embroidered works in all of history, the Bayeux Tapestry is 20 inches tall and 230 feet long. Through its many panels, it tells the story of the events surrounding the battle of Hastings, which took place on Oct. 14, 1066.

It was there that the Norman Conquest unfolded. On the one side the Anglo-Saxons, led by Harold Godwinson, recently crowned the King of England. Pitted against his army were the Normans, led by William the Conqueror. Even today, you can tell who is who in the tapestry. The Normans are shown with their heads shaved while the Anglo-Saxons have mustaches.

Amazingly, the Bayeux Tapestry contains the images of more than 600 humans, 35 dogs, some 200 horses, 41 ships, 500 other animals and 2,000 words in Latin.

Technically, the Bayeux Tapestry is not really a tapestry at all. The original was embroidered, not woven. But that doesn't affect its value to historians and art lovers in the least.

The tapestry is believed to have been commissioned by William's half brother, Bishop Odo of Bayeux and was to be displayed in the Bayeux Cathedral to commemorate his brother's bold victory. The tapestry was first mentioned in 1476 in an inventory of the cathedral. Two missing panels are believed to have shown William ascended to the throne of England.

The Bayeux Tapestry remained in the cathedral from more than 400 years, and then little is known of it for the next 300. The masterpiece almost ended its days as a cover for goods on a wagon. During the French Revolution, there was a serious shortage of cloth and a villager remembered there was some old cloth in the church. Lambert Leonard Leforestier saw what was happening and offered his own cloth as a trade for the priceless cathedral tapestry.

At one time, it was believed that Napoleon had used the tapestry to plan his own invasion of England. He had had the Bayeux Tapestry removed from the cathedral at one point and transported to Paris.

A replica of the tapestry is on display at the Museum of Reading in England. The brainchild of Elizabeth Wardle, a skilled embroiderer, she began her effort to reproduce the work after visiting the original in 1885. She felt strongly that England should have its own Bayeux Tapestry.
Thirty-five members of the Leek Embroidery Society completed the replica in a year.

As a nod to the morality of the Victorian era, the Museum of Reading reproduction has a naked figure that is in the original covered with clothing to cover his privates. Otherwise, the two works are almost identical.

Today, the original Bayeux Tapestry has been returned to its rightful home, the Bayeux Cathedral. There, it is proudly displayed in the village of Bayeux in Normandy, France and is open to tourists.

Individual panels and sections of the Bayeux Tapestry have been reproduced for home display as well. Chronicling specific key events within the battle, each tapestry is a faithful reproduction of the original and allows homeowners the chance to not only bring a magnificent work of art into their home, but a piece of European history as well.

Want impressive wall art for your home? Then see this fine collection of the latest tapestry wall hangings for ideas to inspire your imagination. Tom Matherson writes for Worldwide Tapestries where you can find a superb range of medieval tapestries and wall decor and other art tapestries to decorate your home.

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