Exhibition Catalogue

ANN TANKSLEY
IMAGES OF ZORA
Essay by Faye V. Harrison
July 24-August 23, 2009
Avisca Fine Art Gallery
We gratefully acknowledge the contribution and support of the following people
Faye V. Harrison
Valerie Boyd
Temeka Cage
Marcus Braham
Claudia Danies
Juan Clavell
Maynard Banks
Maureen Otolo
Drs Jeff and Sivan Hines
Bill James
Carnegie Mellon Black Alumni Association
We wish to thank these generous sponsors
Jonathan and Sheraun Parris 2
Ann Tanksley
Images of Zora
The story of “Images of Zora” began in 1988. Ann Tanksley’s youngest daughter had just graduated from Tufts University and had
shipped home some boxes of books. One of the boxes arrived damaged and, since she wasn’t sure what was in the box, Ann decided it
was best to open it in case there was damage to the contents that had to be reported. Inside the box, right on the top, was Zora Neale
Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. She started reading it and found herself unable to put it down. She recalls knowing then and
there that she ‘had to do a visual interpretation’. She did a painting which she titled The Drag Out and later gave it to her daughter as a
gift for introducing her to Zora Neale Hurston.
Some time later her friend, the psychiatrist Dr. Hugh Butts, was visiting and saw Ann’s copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God on her
coffee table. He excitedly told Ann of an idea he had been nursing: of analyzing Zora Neale Hurston through all of her writings. He
asked Ann if she would consider doing the visual interpretations to accompany the study. Not feeling that she was up to a task of such
magnitude, Ann hesitated at first, but it didn’t take long for her to make up her mind. She accepted the challenge and, though a recognized painter, she was also an accomplished printmaker and chose the medium of printmaking for the project for artistic and practical
reasons. She had earlier studied the techniques of creating and printing monotypes, that most painterly of printmaking techniques,
and she thought it would be the ideal medium.
The collaboration would result in Ann devouring every piece of Zora Neale Hurston’s writing that was in print, in addition to the
reams of manuscript that her collaborator would send her every couple weeks. Along the way, she says, she discovered an uncanny symmetry between her life and that of her muse. Just as Zora did, Ann had an older sister who was considered prettier and more proper; the
apple tree in Ann’s childhood yard which she would climb to escape the world had a parallel in Zora’s Chinaberry tree refuge (and became the source for Ann’s print Out on a Limb); Both women went to New York to begin their respective careers. But the similarities
ran even deeper, and Ann found that in interpreting Zora Neale Hurston and reading the analyses her friend did, she came to analyze
herself.
The project was completed but the book was never published. Creatively, it had started Ann on a path of discovery that would lead to
the eventual creation of an expanded series of prints inspired by Hurston. In Ann’s own words, “...Zora Neale Hurston’s work has had
such a profound influence on my work. She writes a script of boundless imagery, so alive and relevant that she feeds my imagination. I
never cease to run out of material to draw from.”
The resulting series of work (some 60-odd monotypes) was first shown in New York City in the 1991 exhibition “Zora: A Visual Interpretation of Zora Neale Hurston: Prints by Ann Tanksley.” Described in a review by art critic Raymond Steiner as “one of the most
visually stimulating exhibitions I’ve seen for some time,” the exhibition was taken to Ann’s hometown of Pittsburgh by the Pittsburgh
chapter of the Links, Inc. and subsequently travelled to Eatonville, Fl., Zora Neale Hurston’s hometown, among other venues.
3
Over the intervening years some of the original prints have made their way into private and public collections but the bulk of the series
has remained intact and archived for nearly two decades. For Ann, though, the series is very much a single work and so she has over
time employed other printmaking techniques (silk aquatint, collagraph, transfer drawing) to recreate and replace many of those missing
images. The current exhibit comprises monotypes originally created between 1988 and 1990, and monoprints created as recently as
2009.
The essays in this catalogue offer two different approaches. Faye V. Harrison has contributed an essay that contextualizes Zora, her significance across the disciplines, and the inspiration she offers artists and other cultural specialists who dare to blur the boundary between creative media and social inquiry. This assessment of the importance of Zora Neale Hurston as muse will undoubtedly enhance
our appreciation of Ann Tanksley interpretative and artistic achievement with this series. Dr. Tameka Cage offers a beautifully imaginative piece that links the two women in a communion of spirit and constructs for us a sturdy bridge between the literary and the visual.
For all the impact that “Images of Zora” had when it was first shown, it did not make Ann Tanksley’s career. She had already created
a remarkable body of work that had caught the attention of curators, critics and collectors, and she had developed a reputation as an
artist of great sensitivity to the human condition, a well trained awareness, and an honest voice. Her commitment to the cause of social
justice is evident in many of her seminal works such as Canal Builders (1986) and Hibiscus Pickers (1984). Her narratives of everyday
life are intimate yet magical and so clearly illustrate her ability to blend the real and the abstract in a way that never ceases to fascinate.
The yielding silhouettes and landscapes in prints like Tell My Wife and Twelve on a Hill from this exhibition, for example, suggest the
delicate boundaries between reality and mythology in Folklore. We also see in this series of work Ann’s customary adeptness at finding
and applying the appropriate technique and form to suit the idea: her choice of black and white prints offers a stark contrast that makes
the embellishments, gestures, and postures of the figures all the more profound and imaginative.
A close look at the work of Ann Tanksley and the prints in this exhibition reveals the creative genius of this abundantly talented artist.
It will also reveal the most profound syncrony between the two great artists: the way the spirits of a monumental literary muse and her
supremely creative visual interpreter align in perfect kinship.
Byrma Braham
Gallery Director
4
Twelve On A Hill
“‘Well,’ replied Joe Wiley, ‘my ole man had some
land dat was so rich dat our mule died and we
buried him down in our bottom-land and de next
mornin’ he had done sprouted li’l jackasses.’”
Mules And Men – Zora Neale Hurston
Twelve on a Hill, 1988
Monoprint
11 x 14 inches
5
Jumping At The Sun
In 1925, after moving to new York, Zora proved her seriousness as a
writer when she published her first short story, Drenched in Light. It was
Zora’s story of how she, indeed, “Jumped At The Sun”, thus fulfilling
her mother’s desire for her to try and achieve her full potential. The
journey from Eatonville to New York was long and hard but enriching
and fulfilling.
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s Drenched in Light
Jumping at the Sun, 1995
Monoprint
14 x 11 inches
6
EthnoGraphics and Blurred Boundaries in the Legacy of an Artist’s Muse
Faye V. Harrison
Ann Tanksley’s “Images of Zora” are an absolutely phenomenal collection of artwork inspired by the life and writings of Zora Neale
Hurston, whose significance has had a profound impact across a broad spectrum of endeavor in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Hurston was a formidable woman of many talents with the confidence and courage to “jump at de sun,” as her beloved mother
had encouraged her to do.1 Despite the many obstacles she faced, including her mother’s premature death, Hurston grew up to become
a prolific fiction writer, playwright, stage performer, folklorist, anthropologist, ethnographic filmmaker, movie screenwriter and, newspaper journalist. However, despite having produced an impressive oeuvre, indeed a peerless body of work that included four novels, two
folklore collections, an autobiography, and nineteen short stories, Hurston’s extraordinary career declined quite dramatically, eventually
compelling her to accept work as a maid and even later to be dependent on welfare relief. When she died in 1960, she was indigent
and buried without a headstone. Nonetheless, she “didn’t have a pauper’s funeral,” because her friends in Fort Pierce, Florida—both
Baptists and Methodists—collected money from the community so that her culturally rich life could be appropriately celebrated.2
From Erasure to Resurrection
With Hurston’s public visibility drastically diminished, and her books no longer in print, it took successive rescue projects such as Alice
Walker’s timely search for her literary and spiritual foremother’s burial place,3 Walker’s reclaiming Hurston’s writing in the widely-distributed reader, I Love Myself When I Am Laughing …And Then Again,4 and Robert Hemenway’s5 thoroughly researched literary biography to bring Hurston’s three-decade-long erasure from the canon to an end.6 Actually, the decision to bring Hurston’s books back into
print after an unfortunate hiatus preceded these high profile interventions. Beginning in the 1960s members of the Hurston family,
possibly in dialogue with literary scholars including Darwin Turner,7 renewed the copyrights for their kinswoman’s books, enabling the
publication of new editions for a younger generation of readers.
Over the past thirty years, Zora has come to occupy her rightful place in literary history as well as in present-day discourses on the vibrant vernacular cultural life of African Americans and their diasporic counterparts in the Caribbean. Zora’s life and writings—both
reprints of earlier writings and an impressive number of posthumously published works—have profoundly raised the level of awareness
concerning the organic relationship that everyday culture has with the literary, visual, and performing arts as well as with the social sciences. In particular, folklore and anthropology, disciplines that have intertwined in the intellectual histories of Afrodiasporic cultural
studies,8 have joined literary criticism in reclaiming Zora as an author of great renown and far-reaching relevance.
The renewed awareness of Zora’s significance has not been limited to academia. Her appeal for the popular consciousness and cultural literacy of
American society has also grown. This impact has been fostered by the Oprah Winfrey-produced 2005 ABC broadcast of “Their Eyes Were Watch-
7
ing God,” starring none other than Halle Berry as Janie Crawford. Since 2006 the National Endowment of the Arts, in partnership with
the Institute of Museum and Library Services, has promoted Zora’s popularization through a nation-wide reading program, The Big
Read (http://www.neabigread.org/). The goal is to make literature a central part of the cultural life of the American populace. Their
Eyes Were Watching God is one of the books around which community-level public programming (e.g., panel discussions, public readings and discussions, and film screenings) is being promoted.
Aesthetic Translation through Visual Art and EthnoGraphics
Zora has clearly served as a Muse in Ann Tanksley’s artistic production, inspiring its aesthetic content as well as the methodology the
artist has undertaken to set the stage for her creative action in the studio. The sources of the ideas Ann Tanksley has translated into her
remarkable paintings, monotypes, and monoprints are no mere abstractions, informed simply by what she has taken away from reading
texts. The nuanced lens she has used in penetrating the multiple layers of meaning in Zora’s short stories, novels, and blurred or hybrid
genre writings on folklore have been crafted through the artist’s conscientious deployment of a fieldwork-based strategy akin to what sociocultural anthropologists employ. Participant-observation is a grounded, intensive dialogic engagement with the people an investigator seeks to understand—on their terms and according to their cultural logics.
Actively seeking to witness aspects of the lived experiences and life worlds of the African Diaspora, Ann Tanksley has traveled the major
routes mapped in Zora’s writings as well as in the historic formation of the transatlantic Diaspora. In a sense, her artwork represents a
sort of “visual anthropology” enriched by an ethnographic sensibility cultivated over the course of many creatively productive years.
The “Images of Zora” exhibition, hence, symbolically represents and is the concrete outcome of an exemplary mode of aesthetic practice that, through language play, can be labeled ethnographics.
Zora Neale Hurston initiated this interdisciplinary approach by positioning herself at a crossroads of knowledge where anthropology,
creative writing, the performing arts, and journalism converged. Ann Tanksley’s art is clearly a part of Zora’s legacy, the legacy of a singular modality of cultural production in which the evocative power of prose enables us to envision a richly textured imagery that brings
to life fictional characters, plots, and scenes of action (and conflict) in our collective consciousness and imagination. The powerful visual quality of Zora’s writing lends itself to the aesthetic translations we find in Ann Tanksley's work, which, in its own right, is also
grounded in African American and Afrodiasporic cultural experiences.
New Identities and Possibilities for Culturally-Inspired Practice
Zora, as the focus and inspirational source for this exhibition, embodied a synthesis of three major intellectual streams whose confluence and tensions set the stage for her creative practice: 1) the vernacular knowledge of Black folk communities, 2) the philosophy of
the New Negro, which undergirded the Harlem Renaissance, and 3) Boasian anthropology, whose scientific antiracism argued for the
validity of African American culture and cultural history. Zora’s unique signature was influenced by elements from all three of these.
8
A daughter of the deep south who grew up in the all-Black town of Eatonville, Florida, Zora was able to “jump at de sun” at a particular moment in history when African American artists, scholars, and sociopolitical activists were intensely involved in critically and creatively reinventing themselves and the way Black people(s) were represented in the public sphere. Her career as a writer was launched
during the Harlem Renaissance and the closely aligned New Negro Movement, which provided the philosophical underpinnings for the
expressive cultural innovations that blossomed in metropolitan centers all over the country, from Los Angeles to Chicago and New York
City, the global city that became the capital of the “Negro Renaissance.”
Sociocultural life in the United States was greatly transformed by the Great Migration (1910-40) and the political and economic conditions that pushed and pulled Black people from the largely agrarian south to northern industrial centers. Especially in the northeast, an
emigration stream from the Caribbean constituted another important demographic and cultural inflow that contributed to the dynamic
cultural milieu that engendered the Black Cultural Renaissance and kindred sociopolitical trends (e.g., W.E.B. Du Bois’ protest politics
and the mass movement of Black nationalists Marcus and Amy Garvey). Transnational and intercultural dimensions were integral to
the conditions upon which “New Negroes” were able to fashion progressive, cosmopolitan expressions of personhood and cultural belonging in politics, scholarship, creative writing, the performing arts, and also the visual arts (as reflected in Aaron Douglass’ contributions to Alain Locke’s9 The New Negro anthology).
After studying at Morgan Academy (later Morgan State University) and Howard University, Zora found her way to Harlem. She was
encouraged to move there by the philosopher Alain Locke, who was one of her professors at Howard, and sociologist Charles Johnson,
who edited the Urban League’s Opportunity (1923-48). Opportunity was a magazine that along with the NAACP’s Crisis, with W.E.B.
Du Bois as editor, played a major role in promoting young scholars
and writers.10 After winning an Opportunity competition with “Drenched in Light”11 and, as a consequence, having her short story
published in this nationally distributed outlet, Zora moved from Washington, D.C. to the “Niggerati’s Mecca,” which became the base
from which she continued to build her reputation as a talented writer.
In New York, she continued her studies at Barnard, where she was exposed to anthropology and had the chance to study with Franz
Boas and Ruth Benedict at Columbia. She also assisted Boas’ former student, Melville Herskovits, in his anthropometric research in
Harlem, which was designed to disprove prevailing theories of racial inferiority.12 Her first fieldwork experience entailed measuring the
heads of random individuals she encountered on Lenox Avenue. Langston Hughes later recounted that Zora was able to pull off this
task because of the ease with which she interacted with other black people, creating a comfort zone even with strangers.2 This was
something she learned from having grown up in Eatonville. This and other important lessons learned during her childhood from vernacular funds of knowledge informed the unique style she brought to her oeuvre.
Vernacular intellectual activities in their most distilled form are expressed in the overlapping sociocultural domains of religion, music,
and the orature or orality articulated in folklore. In intuitive and intellectual terms, Zora understood the epistemological and aesthetic
9
Jonah
“The novel is basically John’s [Hurston, Zora’s father] story. He rises
from a life as an illiterate laborer to become moderator of a Baptist convention in central Florida. The seeds of his tragedy are sown early: he
cannot resist women, and although he is a powerful man of God when in
the pulpit, he is a man among women when the inspiration ends….
Eventually his congregation rejects him, and he dies just as he has begun
to understand both his success and his failure.”
Hurston biographer Robert Hemenway, discussing Hurston’s autobiographical novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine
Jonah, 1988
Monotype
10 x 8 inches
10
value of these dimensions of Black culture, manifested largely in the everyday life of a rural quasi-peasantry and proletariat. Her understanding and love for ordinary Black folk, however, superseded the sentiments of many prominent members of the Black intelligentsia,
who, despite the lip service to “the folk-spirit”,9 proved to be much less inclined to embrace vernacular culture. Through these intellectuals’ class-biased and urban-centered gaze, the characters in Their Eyes and in Hurston’s other texts appeared too similar to prevailing
stereotypes. Her critics were unable to appreciate how Zora’s skillful portraiture debunked dominant images and vindicated the cultural
and psychological integrity of Black communities in the rural south.
Zora was able to bring Black folk knowledge and her creative sensibility into articulation with anthropology through her tutelage under
Boas. Credited with being the “father” of anthropology in the United States, Boas was a German Jewish intellectual who became a
strong advocate for geography and anthropology as historical and idiographic sciences seeking a thorough understanding of cultural
phenomena on their own terms. His theoretical and methodological approach, cultural relativism and historical particularism, relied on
intensive fieldwork directed at the collection of primary data rather on the speculation of armchair theorists. Boasian anthropology,
whose social analysis was also informed by the critical application of anthropometry, challenged the legitimacy of scientific racism, social Darwinism, and the related eugenics policies that violated the rights of racial minorities and immigrants, especially those from
southern and eastern Europe and Asia.
These elements of Boasianism resonated quite strongly with the preoccupations of the New Negro Movement, which sought to transform Black identity by shifting its moorings onto ethnic terrain.10 New Negro thinkers sought a paradigm shift from the prevailing biologically determinist discourse to an understanding of Blackness based on cultural continuity, cohesiveness and distinctiveness. Both
Boasians and New Negro Movement thinkers were proponents of the idea that the cultures of the oppressed were significant sources of
knowledge distilled in observable styles and expressions, with folklore being the most emblematic. They also shared a sense of urgency
for documenting rural black culture, which was changing rapidly in the wake of mass migrations to the north and west. Hence, salvage
ethnography focusing on folkloric forms emerged as a high priority in the study of American Indians and Blacks. Zora was at the right
place at the right time.
Ethnographic Experience & Innovative Precedents in Blurred-Genre Writing
Before her exposure to anthropology, Zora’s approach to Black life was largely emotional and intuitive. After 1926, the literature she
produced was influenced by an anthropological perspective—which, of course, did not preclude the “politics of love”13 that continued
to inform her research. Her anthropological perspective was shaped by both a Boasian “spy-glass”14 and the experience she gained from
the intensive fieldwork that reconnected her to the everyday life of southern Black folk. In 1927 she returned to Eatonville and also visited other communities in Florida and Louisiana. In 1936-37, with the novel Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934)15 and the folklore collection
Mules and Men (1935)14 under her belt, she conducted fieldwork in Jamaica and Haiti (and to a lesser extent in Barbados), which led to
the publication of Tell My Horse (1938),16 an important contribution to the study of Caribbean folklore.
11
Methodologically, Hurston brought the perspective of an ethnic or diasporic insider as well as that of a trained observer into her rsearch,
conventionally assumed to be an outsider in anthropology. She was “an instrument for recording and playing back the oral and visionary texts of black culture”.17 She adopted an interpretive and symbolic style of ethnographic analysis in which Black culture was a distinct and valid entity in its own right rather than a deficient, attenuated, or sub-standard variety of Anglo-American or European
culture. She illuminated cultural cohesiveness and continuities with an African past (especially in religion, music, and orality) despite
racism’s impact. In her perspective, female-male relations and Black female agency were more central than race in the everyday social
interactions of Black folk.17 She rejected the modernist ideology of primitivism, prevalent among American and European art consumers of that period. Although Zora herself relied on benefactors whose philanthropy was framed in these problematic terms, she,
nonetheless, understood the stakes in the cultural struggle. The legacy of slavery, colonialism, and the continuing reality of racism were
implicit in her writings, but this was not enough for critics who demanded explicit protest. Despite public criticism, Hurston’s conviction was to vindicate the culture and intelligence of ordinary Black people. She “saw black people, especially black women, struggling
beneath the weight of racism … and laughing to keep from crying” (emphasis mine).17
Despite the political conservatism she expressed about segregation and the Supreme Court’s Brown decision, Zora was ahead of her
time, a progressive, in feminist representation and as an innovator in ethnographic and ethnographically-inspired writing. Recent
trends in “writing culture”18 and writing against essentialist models of culture are amply reflected in anthropologists’ interest in experimenting with the research agendas and textual techniques associated with reflexivity, multivocality, polyphony, auto-ethnography, and
native anthropology. These experiments in writing and cultural analysis include the creative blurring of the boundaries between genres,
particularly that between ethnography and fiction. Zora’s boundary blurring practice has come to represent an important precedent
that many contemporary writers and some social scientists now embrace.
She wrote her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God,19 while in Haiti, where she managed to achieve a balance between her
ethnographic and literary imperatives. This balancing act came from her remarkable versatility and ability to negotiate cultural divergences and convergences on diasporic terrain. Zora’s experience in the Caribbean helped to crystallize her understanding of African-descended women and the asymmetries in the social organization of Black communities across a transnational geography. She applied
those ethnographic insights to her creative writing, most notably to the now classic Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Concluding Reflections
Zora’s incredibly evocative and provocative writings have invited the kind of imaginative storytelling and artistic translations we find in
Brodner’s Louisiana and in Ann Tanksley’s visually compelling paintings and prints in “Images of Zora.” The latter revisit characters, allegories, scenes, and themes from Zora’s fiction, folklore, and autobiography as well as from a few texts written about her. Tanksley’s interpretations of these writings owe a great deal to her stellar sensibility as an artist whose aesthetics are grounded in her own
ethnographics, honed through years of travel, experimentation, and lessons learned from the achievements of earlier or more senior
African American artists, among them Elizabeth Catlett and the late Jacob Lawrence.
12
Spunky Woman
Hurston was fascinated with snakes, which was probably why she used
them in several of her novels. In Sweat, Sykes tries to get rid of his
Christian wife Delia by putting a poisonous rattle snake in her clothes
hamper. Delia escapes from the snake and flees from the house. Later,
when Sykes returns home expecting to find his wife dead, the snake
turns and bites him. Sykes dies.
Artist’s notes on Sweat by Zora Neale Hurston
Spunky Woman, 1988
Monoprint
14 x 11 inches
13
Ann Tanksley’s earnest engagement with Zora Neale Hurston’s multisensory-rich prose clearly inspired her to produce an extraordinary
collection of paintings and prints. “Images of Zora” will certainly motivate many of its viewers to revisit—or become acquainted
with—Zora’s work with a deepened interest, a discerning lens, and a warm embrace for the legacy
that this amazing Renaissance Woman bequeathed to the world. I commend Avisca Fine Art Gallery for organizing and hosting this exhibition, which will undoubtedly make an indelible impression on many.
Faye V. Harrison is Director of the African American Studies Program and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida. She is the author of Outsider Within: Reworking Anthropology in the Global Age (2008) and co-editor of African-American Pioneers in Anthropology (1999).
Harrison was the recipient of the Southern Anthropological Society’s 2007 Zora Neale Hurston Award for Mentoring, Service, and Scholarship.
Notes
1. Hurston, Zora Neale. 1942. Dust Tracks on a Road. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott. 2006
reprint, New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
2. Boyd, Valerie. 2003. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. New York:
A Lisa Drew Book, Scribner.
3. Walker, Alice. 1975. In Search of Zora Neale Hurston. Ms. March, pp. 74-79, 85-89.
4. Walker, Alice, ed. 1979. I Love Myself When I am Laughing…And Then Again: A Zora
Neale Hurston Reader. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press.
5. Hemenway, Robert E. 1977. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
6. Gates, Henry Lewis, Jr. 1995. Afterword. In The Complete Stories. Pp. 285-294. New
York: HarperPerennial.
7. Turner, Darwin T. 1970. Introduction to the Perennial Edition. In Mules and Men:
Negro Foltales and Voodoo Practices in the South. Pp. 6-15. New York: Perennial Library,
Harper & Row.
11. Hurston, Zora Neale. 1924. Drenched in Light. Opportunity 2 (December): 371-374.
12. Herskovits, Melville J. 1928. The American Negro: A Study in Racial Crossing. New
York: A.A. Knopf.
13. Harrison, Faye V. 2008. Outsider Within: Reworking Anthropology in the Global Age.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
14. Hurston, Zora Neale. 1935. Mules and Men. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott. 1970
reprint, New York: Perennial Library.
15. Hurston, Zora Neale. 1934. Jonah’s Gourd Vine. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott. 1990
reprint, New York: Harper Perennial, 1990.
16. Hurston, Zora Neale. 1938. Tell My Horse. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott. 1990
reprint, New York: Perennial Library.
8. Harrison, Faye V. 2006. Anthropology and Anthropologists. In Encyclopedia of
African- American Culture and History. Volume 1, A-B, pp. 94-103. Colin A. Palmer, Editor in Chief. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, Thomson Gale.
17. Mikell, Gwendolyn. 1999. Feminism and Black Culture in the Ethnography of Zora
Neale Hurtson. In African-American Pioneers in Anthropology. Ira E. Harrison and Faye V.
Harrison, eds. Pp. 51-69. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
9. Locke, Alain, ed. 1983 [1925]. The New Negro. New York: Atheneum.
18. Clifford, James and George Marcus, eds. 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press.
10. Baker, Lee D. 1998. From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race,
1896-1954. Berkeley: University of California Press.
14
Musser, Judith, ed. 2008. “Tell It to Us Easy” and Other Stories: A Complete Short Fiction
Anthology of African American Women Writers in Opportunity Magazine (1923-1948). Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers.
19.Hurston, Zora Neale. 1937. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott. 1965 reprint, Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Premier Book, Fawcett Publications, Inc.
As They Watched
A burst of thunder and lightning could be heard
outside the house as the storm raged and the waters
began to swell. Tea Cake and Moter stopped shooting crap. Janie, Tea Cake and Motor huddled closer
and stared at the door. Six eyes were questioning
God as their eyes were watching God.
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes
were Watching God
As ey Watched, 1988
Monotype
11 x 14 inches
15
Miriam
“Moses was sitting in his tent writing when he looked up and saw
Miriam standing over him…. ‘Moses, I come here this evening to
ask you to let me die’. ‘Why, Miss Miriam!’…. ‘Cause I know I
can’t die without it. at right hand of yours – It’s got light in front
of it and darkness behind. Moses, I come in the humblest way I
know how to let you know I done quit straining against you. I done
quit putting my poor little strength up against yours. I’m just a beat
old woman and I want to die’.”
Moses, Man of the Mountain– Zora Neale Hurston
Miriam, 1988
Monotype
10 x 8 inches
16
Ann and Zora Speak: “Kissin’ Friends” and the Power of Communion
Tameka L. Cage
“Ah know exactly what Ah got to tell yuh, but it’s hard to know where to start at.”
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
When a great shaking occurs in our lives, whether fragrant as a rose petal or sour as the worst bad luck you’ve ever seen, it does not become real until we’ve shared its happening with someone we love. Oh, we can take it in within ourselves, inhale it deep into our bellies
with a solitary breath, or privately sip it like hot cinnamon tea, or we might roll it over in the still of our minds, thinking, “Well, what
do you know,” or “Who would have thought,” or “Have mercy on me,” realizing in that moment that either a dream has come true or a
dream has dug a grave for itself, but when we really think about it, it is the telling that births it out, that makes the thing true and felt.
We yearn to tell; we were born that way. For in the telling, there is life and life more abundantly.
In the tradition of telling and being listened to, and of giving one’s all and receiving all a friend has to give, in this vibrant collection,
full of sensuality and hunger—for I beg for more of Tanksley’s wondrously intoxicating brush—Ann Tanksley and Zora Neale Hurston
speak, not in riddles, phony intentions, or exaggerated tales, but like Janie and Phoebe, who in Hurston’s masterpiece, Their Eyes Were
Watching God, are girlfriends who “feel and do” through the act of sharing and listening. After a long journey of freedom and first
times, when she explores a different social, human landscape with the greatest love she’d ever known, then the “meanest moment of
eternity” that required she first kill then bury her beloved, Janie returns home, weary, but not broken, burdened, but not ashamed.
Though she is met with scrutiny from the townspeople, eager to see her fall, she unfolds herself to Phoebe, saying, “You can tell ‘em
what Ah say if you wants to. Dat’s just de same as me ‘cause mah tongue is in mah friend’s mouf…We been kissin-friends for twenty
years, so I depend on you for a good thought.” In this passage, “kissin’” is not a reference to the meeting of mouths that we might
commonly assign to lovers. It holds within itself, however, the full presence of intimacy, trust, and consolation. In this way, “kissin’”
manifests as a sharing of mind, self, and personal history, and is as powerfully sacred as a lover’s embrace, full of tenderness and desire,
kindness and wisdom. It is offered with the sincerity of a prayer, and an unquenchable need: to be heard, and to be loved.
In the tradition of “kissin,’” in the way Hurston calls upon us to understand it, Hurston tells; Tanksley listens, then maps a bold, visual
story of her own, made possible because art is breath to her, and because Zora had the courage to utter in the first place. I have a vision. In it, Ann and Zora are “kissin’-friends.” In the mini-seconds between when the kiss departs from the lips of one, and arrives on
the turned-toward cheek of the other, civilizations fall and are built again, children play and giggle, girls blossom into mothers, and the
voices of boys grow deep like their fathers, all because two artists, bold and courageous in the work they have done and continue to do,
have decided to sit down a while, and have a meeting-of-souls. My vision goes on. Ann pauses to laugh in that way of hers that is musical, lovely, and full of grace and thanksgiving. Zora throws her head back, her mouth open wide in a loud cackle, in that way Southern women have, that might make it seem they don’t have a care in the world, when all they’ve really done is left their cares and bad news at
17
His feet, or softly cried them out while kneading dough for a peach pie, or picking roses in their garden. As Ann and Zora chat, they
speak of women and the crosses we bear, and talk of darkness that can only first be felt, and then painted with brush or words. Over
minted lemonade and tea cakes, they exchange stories of journeys from Pittsburgh and Eatonville, and suck their teeth about racism’s
stupidity and hatred. They find each other’s glance and smile a knowing smile, thankful for the time to share, “to feel and do” through
each other, like Janie and Phoebe, two “kissin’ friends” who hold each other up like beautiful soldiers in battle. Ann is grateful that
Zora was in the world, and Zora admires Ann for remembering, not only her, but perhaps more crucially, the stories she told, that live
on, and on again.
As an admirer of these artists—for Tanksley’s breadth captivates me and Hurston, quite simply, is a foremother for me and all the writers I adore—I take the liberty to join this kiss, for a triple-stranded cord is not easily broken. I render a humble praisesong to “Mother”
and “Miriam,” from Tanksley’s “Images of Zora” series.
As a seer, I visualize whispers in “Mothers.” These whispers, captured in soft, feathery clouds, wrap around the mothers, much like a
never-ending halo, and might be the breaths of mothers who have passed on, but who thought first to leave a blessing for their daughters’ endurance as they “mother,” which is as much a word of action as it is a word that denotes “parent.” The mothers in the painting,
who are as imposing and awe-inspiring as mountains, do not bear the features of women, at least not in the way we might typically associate. For there are no pugnacious breasts, ruby-red mouths, or long, perfect fingernails, also clad in a hot, red hue. But there need
not be. For in this piece, Tanksley resists gender characterization of mothers as women, to idealize and illuminate mothers as spirits, or
rather, to present motherhood as a spiritual identity, timeless and unbreakable. The hands of the mothers are almost frightfully enlarged, which demonstrate their power and near super-humanness, as they hold their blanketed babies in an embrace, as tight as death.
Or life. The darkness of their bodies, illuminated only by tiny dots for eyes, and a faint nose and mouth might suggest the mothers
have “died” to themselves so that life might pass to their children. The “infants” are not tiny and fresh from the womb, or miniature
toddlers, just above two feet tall, but rather, glow like illuminated boulders, their bodies secure in the mothers’ grasps. As I gaze at this
work, I cannot help but think of Janie’s grandmother, who tells the story of her escape from slavery with her infant daughter—born of
rape from the grandmother’s “master”—in tow, as she crouched in swamps, in fear of both men and gators, slave catchers and snakes,
and how that infant daughter was eventually raped, and abandoned her own daughter, not so much because she did not love her, but
perhaps because she no longer felt she was worth her.
For speaking against Moses, Miriam became a temporary leper, and for an eye’s swift blink, lost favor with God, and was banished to
the outskirts of the Israelites’ camp for seven days. She is a prominent character in Hurston’s novel, Moses, Man of the Mountain, a folklore adaption of the person/character of Moses, and his terrible, magnificent journey of bringing God’s people “up out of ” Egypt, and
into the Promised Land. In “Miriam,” I see a dance. Not the dance she renders in an uninhibited, extravagant celebration of feet and
limbs after the children of Israel had crossed the Jordan, dried by God’s vengeance and passion for his people, but rather, a dance of
sickness, judgment, and that performed by the utterly “cast out.” I see a dance, in part, because of the hands, floating away from the
18
Mothers
“‘This is law. Hebrew boys shall not be born. All offenders against
this law shall suffer death by drowning.’
So women in the pains of labor hid in caves and rocks. They must
cry, but they could not cry out loud. They pressed their teeth together.
A night might force upon them a thousand years of feelings. Men
learned to beat upon their breasts with clenched fists and breathe out
their agony without sound. A great force of suffering accumulated between the basement of heaven and the roof of hell. The shadow of
Pharaoh squatted in the dark corners of every birthing place in Goshen.
Hebrew women shuddered with terror at the indifference of their
wombs to the Egyptian law.”
Moses Man of the Mountain – Zora Neal Hurston
Mothers, 1988
Monotype
14 x 11 inches
19
androgynous body, connected and disconnected, moving in an unspoken, but deeply felt agony. If the painting were a song, it would
be woeful, and might heavily feature the trombone, and the sound that escaped from Lady Day’s mouth when she sang, “Strange Fruit,”
for in fact, hands detached from wrist and limbs, are strange, and lack purpose. The leprous hands seem to be searching for themselves.
The body lacks both roots and certainty, and seems to be lost, and is perhaps androgynous because, like “Mothers,” the spirit of the
body is the focus, as opposed to the physical form of the body. Gender becomes obsolete, and must bow to the experience of being, and
of being human. Again, Miriam’s sex is not nearly as important as her story, or her hands, which were healed and pristine in one moment, and in the next, white with leprosy and uncleanness. Though the painting is steeped in Miriam’s story from the Book of Numbers in the Old Testament, the story could belong to that of (any)body who has felt the sting of suffering, and the awful reality of being
alone.
Sometimes, when women speak, the halls that hold their laughter quiver with the amazing boom of their voices. At other times, their
voices are still and quiet, and they speak in hushed tones, perhaps because of sadness or regrets. In this collection, Tanksley dares to
confront that which Zora spoke in her work. She gathered the “hush” of the secrets Zora enabled her characters to tell, about their bodies and their love, their shame and their hope. Then she gathered the loudness of death, judgment, and triumph, and laid them all
alongside the quiet and the still. To be the reader of one and the beholder of another, has been, and remains, my deep pleasure, and I
savor it like a good conversation with my dearest friend. And we tell and tell, until darkness, hinted with slight light, envelops us.
Tameka Cage is a university educator and youth mentor, and recently completed a visiting appointment at the University of Pittsburgh. She is
currently completing her manuscript, Painful Discourses: Borders, Regions, and Representations of Female Circumcision from Africa to America, for
which she was awarded the Lewis Simpson Distinguished Dissertation Award.
20
Hog-Killing Time
Zora was born in January when the weather was cool and it was hogkilling time all over the country. “Most people were either butchering
for themselves, or off helping other folks do their butchering... It is a
gay time. A big pot of seasoned hasslits cooking with plenty of seasoned,
lean slabs of fresh-killed pork frying…” But for Lucy Hurston, Zora’s
mother, who was alone and in labor, it was a most difficult time.
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road
Hog Killing Time, 1989
Monotype
14 x 11 inches
21
Daddy Had A Big Lap
John Hurston, Zora’s father, was preacher of a small church in the town
of Eatonville, Florida where she was born. Although he was a good
provider, much to Zora and her mother Lucy’s distress, he was known
to visit other women.
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine
Daddy Had a Big Lap, 1995
Hand-colored Aquatint
14 x 11 inches
22
A Family Man
“Jonah’s Gourd Vine is an autobiographical novel, not a document for
understanding Hurston’s private life. It is usually dealt with as fictionalization of her parents’ marriage – complete with her father’s philandering, her mother’s steady strength, and Zora’s reaction to them both.”
Hurston biographer Robert Hemenway, discussing Hurston’s autobiographical novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine
e Family Man, 1999
Monoprint
14 x 11 inches
23
Out on a Limb
As a child, much to the consternation of her elders. Zora Neale
Hurston was always asking questions. No matter whether her probing
made her happy or sad she kept on probing. In Dust Tracks on a
Road, Zora tells of how she sought refuge, after being rebuked by her
elders, by climbing to the top of her chinaberry tree, which guarded
the front of her front gate.
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes were Watching God
Out on a Limb, 2009
Monoprint
14 x 11 inches
24
Corralled
“…for the last decade of her life she was frequently
without money, sometimes pawning her typewriter
to buy groceries… In her very last days Zora lived a
difficult life – alone, proud, ill, obsessed with a final
book she could not complete.”
Zora Neale Hurston – Robert Hemenway
Coralled, 2009
Monoprint
11 x 14 inches
25
Oh to be a Pear Tree
Oh to be a pear tree- any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the
beginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and
bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to
elude her. Where were the singing bees for her?
Their Eyes were Watching God – Zora Neal Hurston
Oh To Be a Pear Tree, 2009
Monoprint
14 x 11 inches
26
Cr ying Tears
“Ah done lived Grandma’s way, now Ah means tuh live mine.”… “She
was borned in slavery time when folks, dat is black folks, didn’t sit down
anytime dey felt lak it. So sittin’ on porches lak de white madam looked
lak uh mighty fine thing tuh her….So ah got up on de high stool lak
she told me, but Pheoby, Ah done nearly languished tuh death up dere.
Ah felt like de world wuz cryin’ extry and Ah ain’t read de common
news yet.”
eir Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale
Crying Tears, 1990
Monotype
14 x 11 inches
27
In Love
Hurston’s romance between Janie and Tea Cake, in Their Eyes Were
Watching God, is perhaps on of the greatest stories ever written. It
took two unhappy marriages for Janie to mature and realize that she
had found her true love in Tea Cake. He satisfied her emotional
and physical needs and gave her the love, respect, and equality she
so richly deserved.
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
In Love, 1988
Monotype
14 x 11 inches
28
Strutting
“Fire!!, was a quarterly ‘devoted to the younger
Negro artists’…. It was primarily the creation of a
group of energetic and talented people centered
around Hurston, Hughes and Thurman who enjoyed shocking the stuffy by calling themselves the
‘Niggerati’. They met frequently to talk literature
and politics, to gossip, and to party.
Zora Neale Hurston – Robert Hemenway
Strutting, 2009
Monoprint
11 x 14 inches
29
Voodoo Hoodoo
As part of her anthropological research, Zora participated in many rituals. She writes, “When dark came, we went out to catch a black
cat…. en we repaired to a prepared place in the woods on a circle
drawn and ‘protected’ with nine horse shoes. en the fire and the pot
were made ready… When the water boiled I was to toss in the terrified, trembling cat…. Before day I was home, with a small white bone
for me to carry”
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men
Voodoo Hoodoo, 1989
Monotype
14 x 11 inches
30
Toe Party
The Toe Party exemplifies Zora’s ability and willingness to fade into
and become a part of her research project on African-American folklore. At the Toe Party the girls hide behind a curtain while the men
look their toes over. Then the men buy the toes they want for a dime.
Black folks have long been able to find pleasure and happiness in spite
of poverty and adversity.
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men
Toe Party, 2009
Monoprint
14 x 11 inches
31
Fears
“What bob-cat, ‘Lige? Ah ain’t heered ’bout none.”
“Ain’t cher? Well, night befo’ las’ was the fust night Spunk an’ Lena
moved together an’ jus’ as they was goin’ to bed, a big black bob-cat,
black all over, you hear me, black, walked round and round that
house and howled like forty, an’ when Spunk got his gun an’ went to
the winder to shoot it he says it stood right still an’ looked him in the
eye, an’ howled right at him. The thing got Spunk so nervoused up he
couldn’t shoot. But Spunk says twan’t no bob-cat nohow. He says it
was Joe done sneaked back from Hell!”
Spunk – Zora Neale Hurston
Fears, 1988
Monotype
14 x 11 inches
32
Bob Comes Back
“Spunk is a had-living, fearless community hero who rides the circle
saw at the saw mill, the most dangerous work on the job. He openly
steals Lena Kanty from her ineffectual husband, Joe, and dares him
to do anything about it. When the store loungers humiliate him, the
indecisive Joe takes a knife to Spunk, only to die when the more experienced fighter shoots him. Freed after a plea of self-defense,
Spunk moves Lena into his own home and prepares to marry her.
He has not reckoned, however, with the ghost of Joe Kanty, who
haunts him, first in the form of a black cat, later as an invisible force
pushing him into the circle saw.”
Hurston biographer Robert Hemenway, discussing Hurston’s story,
Spunk
Bob Comes Back, 1988
Monoprint
14 x 11 inches
33
Frogs
“Moses still stood with his right had lifted and the frogs kept on coming. Little frogs, big frogs, green frogs, toad frogs, rain frogs, bull
frogs, every kind of frog that ever leaped or hopped. e foundation of
the world seemed made of frogs and they came pouring out of that
pond….By that time the palace was besieged by citizens crying for relief from frogs.”
Moses, Man of the Mountain– Zora Neale Hurston
Frogs, 1993
Monoprint
14 x 11 inches
34
The Obser ver
“Jim captures an eight-foot rattlesnake and holds it by its head, calling
Arvay outside to witness his virility.... When the snake wraps itself
around Jim’s waist and threatens, Arvay cannot move:… ‘And in this
terrible danger she went into a kind of coma standing there...’.” Jim is
rescued by his faithful black friend.
Hurston biographer Robert Hemenway, discussing Hurston’s novel,
Seraph on the Suwanee
e Observer, 1994
Monoprint
14 x 11 inches
35
Cudjo’s Capture
As part of her anthropology research, Hurston made a trip to Mobil,
Alabama to interview Cudjo Lewis, the only Negro alive that came
over on a slave ship to America in 1859. Cudjo was captured by Dahomeans, taken to sea, auctioned off by slave traders, and held in slavery for five years from 1860-1865.
Artist’s note based on information from Robert Hemenway’s biography Zora Neale Hurston
Cudjo’s Capture, 2009
Monoprint
14 x 11 inches
36
e Crocodile Soldiers
It was not unusual that Hurston should choose the Nile crocodile that
reigns supreme in Africa, to symbolize Pharaoh’s soldiers: “Amram
looked about wearily, ‘Well if we must fool the crocodiles, let us begin
and do it right. Aaron, go and watch up and down the road while I dig
out a cave under the inside wall for the house. It must be large enough
to hold a child’.”
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain
Crocodile Soldiers, 1988
Monotype
14 x 11 inches
37
Ar vay Meserve
“The novel is about Arvay Henson Meserve , a women seemingly very
different from Zora, whose life is defined by her marriage; Arvay is a
woman searching for herself, trying to overcome a deep feeling of inferiority that leaves her believing she is not worthy of her strong, handsome, ambitious husband.... Jim, on the other hand, plays cruel tricks
on Arvay, has no respect for her intelligence, and abuses the unusual
power he holds over her.”
Hurston biographer Robert Hemenway, discussing Hurston’s novel,
Seraph on the Suwanee
Arvay Meserve, 1988
Monotype
14 x 11 inches
38
The Gilded Six-Bits
“A young Eatonville wife, Missie May, is seduced by a traveling
lothario whose main appeal is a gold watch charm. He promises her
this gold coin, but at the moment of submission they are discovered by
her husband, Joe. The cheapness of the affair and the tarnish of the
marriage is represented by the coin left behind – instead of a ten-dollar
gold piece it turns out to be only a gilded half-dollar.”
Hurston biographer Robert Hemenway, discussing Hurston’s story,
The Gilded Six-Bits
e Gilded Six Bits, 1988
Monotype
14 x 11 inches
39
Running To Freedom
In her novel, Moses Man of the Mountain, Hurston makes the identification between captive blacks in America and the children of Israel in
Egypt. The exodus of black slaves, running to freedom with the help of
Harriet Tubman, can be compared to Moses leading the children of Israel across the Red Sea into Egypt.
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Moses, Man of the Mountain
Running to Freedom, 1988
Monotype
14 x 11 inches
40
Crossing Over
Zora, truly one of the most gifted and talented writers of our times, spent a period of wandering after
her mother’s death while in search of self, a place of
belonging and academic excellence. The pain, loneliness and anxiety that accompanied her quest were
not uncommon to many artists, as well as to Moses:
“The soft murmur of sandals and bare feet kept up
in the night without a moon as Moses and his hosts
moved on.”
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Moses,
Man of the Mountain
Crossing Over, 1988
Monotype
11 x 14 inches
41
e Runaway Church, 1988
Monotype
14 x 11 inches
42
Turpentine City
Hurstons description of the people of Sawley, a ‘turpentine’ town in
southeast Florida, that “wore out the knees of its britches crawling to
the Cross and wore the seat of its pants back-sliding.”
Seraph On e Suwanee – Zora Neale Hurston
Turpentine City 1988
Monotype
10 x 8 inches
43
Spunk Dies
As the story of Spunk ends, Joe returns as an invisible force and pushes Spunk into a circle saw. When
Spunk is killed, he dies cursing Joe for shoving him.
“The cooling board consisted of three sixteen-inch
boards on saw horses, a dingy sheet was his shroud.
The women ate heartily of the funeral baked meats
and wondered who would be Lena’s next. The men
whispered coarse conjectures between guzzles of
whiskey.”
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s story, Spunk
Spunk Dies, 1988
Monotype
8 x 10 inches
44
Snakes II, 1990
Monotype
11 x 14 inches
45
Godmother
“In mid-September, 1927, Zora Neale Hurston visited 399 Park Avenue at the invitation of Mrs. Rufus
Osgood, a very wealthy, beautiful, articulate, elderly,
generous, mystical patron of the Afro-American arts.
Hurston saw her as a godmother, the appelation that
both Hughes and she used, and that Mrs. Mason
preferred.”
Zora Neale Hurston – Robert Hemenway
Godmother, 1988
Monotype
11 x 14 inches
46
Enclosures
“en Africa has her mouth on Moses. All across the continent there
are legends of the greatness of Moses, but not because of his beard nor
because he brought the laws down from Sinai. No, he is revered because
he had the power to go up the mountain and to bring them
down….at calls for power, and that is what Africa sees in Moses to
worship. For he is worshipped as a God.”
Moses Man Of e Mountain – Zora Neale Hurston
Enclosures, 1989
Monotype
14 x 11 inches
47
Moon Belly, 1988
Monotype
11 x 14 inches
48
e House
“ey made it to a tall house on a hump of ground and Janie said, ‘Less
stop heah. Ah can’t make it no further. Ah’m done give out.’ ‘All of us is
done out,’ Tea Cake corrected, ‘We’se goin’ inside out of this weather,
kill or cure’....
ey went to sleep promptly but Janie woke up first. She heard the
sound of rushing water and sat up. ‘Tea Cake! Motor Boat! De lake is
comin’!”
Moses, Man of the Mountain– Zora Neale Hurston
e House, 1988
Monotype
14 x 11 inches
49
Wind and Water
All night he traveled and thought. He found his unformed wishes taken shape and that brought his
thoughts to Nature. It gave him a freshening hope,
as he fled for his life from Rameses: ‘“e Man who
interprets Nature is always held in great honor,’
Moses concluded. ‘I am going to live and talk with
Nature and know her secrets. en I will be powerful, no matter where I may be.’”
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Moses,
Man of the Mountain
Wind and Water, 1990
Monotype
11 x 14 inches
50
Dead Leaves Falling
"Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things
enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the
branches."
Their Eyes were Watching God – Zora Neal Hurston
Dead Leaves Falling, 1988
Monotype
14 x 11 inches
51
The Decline
A highly publicized moral charge, in which Zora was unjustly accused
of sodomizing a young boy, was believed to have been the beginning of
Zora’s end. The deterioration of her career, as well as her health was
rapid. She described her betrayal by her public as painful as falling
into a deep hole.
Artist Note
e Decline, 2009
Monoprint
14 x 11 inches
52
Jesus And Two Mar y’s
Zora wrote: “I had been pitched head-foremost into the Baptist
Church when she was born. I had heard the singing, the preaching
and prayers. ey were a part of me.”
She had studied and read the Bible from cover to cover and was thoroughly steeped in Christian doctrine and theology. is knowledge
served as background material for many of her works.
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Dust Tracks on a Road
Jesus and Two Mary’s, 1989
Monotype
14 x 11 inches
53
A Treasure Chest of Tales
“e gusto and flavor of Zora Neale Hurston storytelling, for example, long before the yarns were published in ‘Mules and Men’ and other books, became
local legend which might…have spread further
under different conditions. A tiny shift in the center
of gravity could have made them best-sellers.”
Arna Bontemps, Personal
A Treasure Chest of Tales, 1991
Hand-Colored Transfer Drawing
24 x 36 inches
54
Bob Comes Back
“Spunk is a had-living, fearless community hero who rides the circle saw at
the saw mill, the most dangerous work on the job. He openly steals Lena
Kanty from her ineffectual husband, Joe, and dares him to do anything about
it. When the store loungers humiliate him, the indecisive Joe takes a knife to
Spunk, only to die when the more experienced fighter shoots him. Freed
after a plea of self-defense, Spunk moves Lena into his own home and prepares to marry her. He has not reckoned, however, with the ghost of Joe
Kanty, who haunts him, first in the form of a black cat, later as an invisible
force pushing him into the circle saw.”
Hurston biographer Robert Hemenway, discussing Hurston’s story, Spunk
Bob Comes Back, 1991
Hand-Colored Transfer Drawing
36 x 24 inches
55
The Catfish
This is a folk tale about a man who refused to obey his wife’s wishes by attending
church on Sundays. One Sunday he was pulled into the lake by a big cat fish
who was hiding under a water lily. “Some folk on de way to church seen him
and run down to de water but he was too deep”
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men
e Catfish, 1991
Hand-Colored Transfer Drawing
36 x 24 inches
56
Funning
“They Played away the evening again. Everybody was surprised at Janie
playing checkers but they liked it. Three or four stood behind her and
coached her moves and generally made merry with her in a restrained way.
Finally everybody went home but Tea Cake”
Their Eyes were Watching God – Zora Neal Hurston
Funning, 1992
Oil on Canvas
40 x 30 inches
57
As the Sun Goes Up
Inspired by George Wolf ’s adaptation of Zora
Neale Hurston’s Spunk
As the Sun Goes Up, 1992
Oil on Canvas
30 x 40 inches
58
As They Watched
A burst of thunder and lightning could be heard outside the house as the
storm raged and the waters began to swell. Tea Cake and Moter stopped
shooting crap. Janie, Tea Cake and Motor huddled closer and stared at the
door. Six eyes were questioning God as their
eyes were watching God.
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes were Watching God
Watching God, 1992
Oil on Canvas
40 x 30 inches
59
Exposed
is novel is basically John Hurston’s story. He rises
from a life as an illiterate laborer to become moderator of a Baptist convention in central Florida. e
seeds of his tragedy are sown early: he cannot resist
woman. Eventually his congregation rejects him, and
he dies just as he has begun to understand both success and his failure.
Artist’s notes on Zora Neale Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd
Vine
Exposed, 1992
Oil on Canvas
16 x 20 inches
60
Tears, 1987
Oil on Canvas
36 x 24 inches
61
Ann Graves Tanksley
Born 1934
Pittsburgh, PA
Education
1956 Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, BFA
Subsequent Studies at:
Art Students League, New York, NY
Parsons School of Design, New York, NY
Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop, New York, NY
New School for Social Research, New York, NY
Paulette Singer Printmaking Workshop, Great Neck, NY
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2006 Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT
2004 Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, Qatar
1999 Milton Rhodes Gallery, Winston Salem, NC
1997 Kenkeleba Gallery, New York, NY
1997 Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans, LA
1996 Huntington Library, Huntington, NY1995 Shelter Rock
Gallery, Shelter Rock, NY
1994 Maitland Center, Maitland, Florida Shelter Rock Gallery,
Shelter Rock, NY
1994 Eatonville Museum, Eatonville, FL
1993 SOHO20, New York, NY
1992 Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh, PA
1992 Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD
1991 California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA
1991 Jamaica Art Center, Jamaica, NY
1991 Berkeley Repertory eater, Berkeley, CA
1991 AC-BAW Gallery for the Arts, Mount Vernon, NY
1989 Barnes & Littles, Washington, D.C.
1988 Spiral Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
1987 Campbell Gallery, Swickley, PA
1987 Campbell Gallery, Swickley, PA
1987 Jamaica Art Center, Jamaica, NY
1986 Dorsey Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
1982 Spectrum II, Mount Vernon, NY
1974 Acts of Art Gallery, New York, NY
1972 Black History Gallery, Hempstead, NY
Selected Group Exhibitions
2001 Connecticut Graphic Arts Center, Norwalk, CT
2000 Stanford Center for the Arts, Stanford, CT
62
1999
1999
1996
1994
1992
1991
NY
1989
1989
1985
1981
1979
1975
1971
1969
Hewitt Collection of African-American Art, Charlotte, NC
Kansas City Jazz Museum, Kansas City, MO
Brooklyn Arts Council, New York, NY
National Arts Club, New York, NY
Museum of African-American Art, Los Angeles, CA
Kenkeleba Gallery, New York, New York 1990 Christie's, New York,
Christie's, New York, NY
Medgar Evers College Art Collection, New York, NY
American Women in Art, Nairobi, Kenya
University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Queens Museum, Queens, NY
New York State Office Building, New York, NY
Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ
Counterpoints 23, New York, NY
Selected Bibliography
Books
Henkes, Robert. “e Art of Black American Women: Works of Twenty-Four
Artists of the Twentieth Century.” Jefferson, NC.: McFarland, 1993.
Moore, Sylvia, ed. “Gumbo Ya Ya: Anthology of Contemporary AfricanAmerican Women Artists.” New York, NY.: Midmarch Arts Press, 1995
Bontemps, Arna Alexander. “Forever Free: Art by African-American
Women.” Alexandria, VA.: Stephenson, 1980
Kahn, Robin, ed. “Time Capsule: A Concise Encyclopedia by Women
Artists.” New York, NY.: Time Inc, 1995
Articles and Reviews
Art Times, March 1991.
Black Arts New York (May 1993): 6.
New Art Examiner (October 1999):18.
New York Times (December 24, 1995)
New York Times (February 11, 1996): LI27
New York Times (June 30, 2002): WE10
Pittsburgh HB News (January 28, 1987): 3
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (March 14, 1992)
Pittsburgh Press (March 13, 1992): 3.
SunStorm/Fine Art (summer 1993): 20.
Winston-Salem Journal (August 3, 1997): 2.
About the Printmaking Processes
Monotype and Monoprint
Monoprinting and monotyping are both hand-printing processes that involve the transfer of ink from a plate to the paper, canvas, or other surface that will ultimately hold the work of art. Although the terms monotype and monoprint are sometimes used interchangeably, they represent
two distinct printmaking processes.
Monotype
A monotype is a one of a kind, hand-pulled print. The artist creates an image with paint or ink on a smooth plate (usually plexiglass or metal),
and transfers the art to paper via contact and pressure between the plate and the paper. The pressure of printing creates a texture not possible
when painting directly on paper. After the paper is squeezed against the still-wet image on the plate, it is literally peeled off the plate by the
artist. This stage of printing is called “pulling.”
The image is created with ink, paint, water-soluble crayons, or any medium that will leave the plate and stick to the paper when they are pressed
together. There are no permanent lines or etch marks on the plate, so the image is created solely by the artist’s manipulation of the medium.
Monotypes are unique, because only one impression of the art can be pulled from the plate before the ink is gone (some people refer to monotypes as the only original art printed in an edition of one.) After the initial print is pulled, there may be just enough pigment left on the plate to
pull a second, faint impression, called a ‘ghost’. The ghost (or cognate, as it is technically known), is a much lighter image, with substantial
variations from the first print, and is more of a transparent suggestion of the first image. A ghost print can be treated as an “under-painting”,
giving the artist creative license to re-work the image with more ink or paint, and alter the ghost print to create an entirely new, one-of-a-kind
work of art.
What is a Monoprint?
The main difference between monotype and monoprint is that monoprinting involves the drawing or etching of some permanent features on
the plate (or matrix), which can be re-used, thereby making it possible to print the image in a (usually very small) series or edition. A monoprint begins with an etched or drawn element on the plate employing any standard printmaking technique such as lithography, etching, or
woodcut. The underlying image remains the same and is common to each print in a given series but each monoprint is made unique by any of
an endless number of variations such as colors, density of the inks, over-painting, embellishing or combining other techniques. Monoprints,
then, can be thought of as variations on a theme, with the theme resulting from the permanent features being found on the plate — lines, textures — that persist from print to print . The variations produce the result of creating a unique impression with each print, and hence the prefix mono.
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