Lavialle Campbell: Quilting in the Shadows

Exploring shadows, Lavialle Campbell elevates quilts to fine art

For centuries, quilts were traditionally women’s work and women’s gifts, viewed in the art world, until recent times, as “art” with “folk” attached at the front, shading perceptions and boxing in the creators and creations. I have a wedding quilt that was made for my grandmother by her female friends and relatives who cut and pieced together hourglass-shaped scraps of calico cotton. It is almost a hundred years old. For decades this was all I knew of quilting: that quilts were made and given as gifts; that they had folkloric symbols; in a contested theory, some might have been encoded as maps on the Underground Railway to guide slaves to the North and freedom; and that the AIDS Quilt is the largest piece of community art in the world (it weights 54 tons in total).

When I first saw Lavialle Campbell’s quilts at Art Miami at Aqua House in December 2014, my view of quilts transformed. I saw how an artist’s use of fabric and stitches could create works as compelling as paintings. By using quilting as the medium, Campbell called in to question the concepts of “woman’s work,” of as women’s place in the art world, reclaiming quilting and elevating it to fine art.

Campbell’s solo show, In The Shadows, at Coagula Curatorial through July 2, 2017, showcases the artist’s talent to impart complex emotions through use of color, shapes, and materials: intricate fabric quilts and in contrast, glass vases and squares, some with the illusion of being covered in fluff, but with heft and deep tones.

Working with shades of indigo, purple, gray, and black, with impacts of acid yellow green, Campbell stitches together her experiences: gender, race, survivor of multiple life-threatening illnesses, artist; within the latter, Campbell is even deeper in the shadows, given that she creates in mediums, per Coagula’s curator, noted art critic Mat Gleason “the canon of institutionalized art gods would rather ignore.”

The same colors appear in her glasswork, and here text and texture come into play, transforming the artist’s illnesses on The List quilt into cold hard proof, the word “Survivor” bold on the alternating pebbled and glossy surfaces.

The near-neon chartreuse cicatrix and semi-circles of Right Breast Left become scattered pieces in Fractured, the with the eye-like shape of the breast now at an angle, dark with strips of purple and indigo as tears or the rays from the Eye of God. The same yellowish green becomes one small square in Oppression, a box in Caged, a calm flowing line in Composure. It is the color Campbell fuses or the text in The List and the color gone from other works, leaving only the cool dark shades of mystery and introspection.

Two pieces step outside the prevailing colors of In The Shadows; in Scrambled and One Dream (#3) bright orange, red and cobalt vibrate against black, hot and alive, counterpoints that provoke the viewer to further explore their reactions to the darker works; to travel into their own shadows; examining their their own reactions to gender, race, illness, mortality; and emerge transformed.

For Campbell, the shadows are multicolored, subtle colorways that lead the viewer through darkness, allowing us to find the beauty, strength, and grace in the darkest of places. On Friday, June 23 at 8pm, she will be discussing her work in an artist talk, conducted by curator Jillith Moniz (Quotidian, Calif. African American Museum, Museum of Latin American Art) at Coagula Curatorial.

Lavialle Campbell “In The Shadows” runs though July 2, 2017 Artist talk Friday June 23, 8pm — free Coagula Curatorial, 974 Chung King Road, Los Angeles, CA 90012