Lisa 
Jarrett 

Nightlights

 

In Nightlights I work with Black images and ideas that have been ubiquitous to me in one way or another—from Harriet Tubman’s image in its singular potency, to the evolving trickster-like images of Diana Ross; and from family photos that range from depicting familiar memories to pictures of relatives who are only/always in my blood-memory. These pictures (mingled with the patterns, textures, and objects from the Beauty Supply) are new directions in the larger project, Phenotyped, of which many of these are a part. My material approach navigates the space between the myth of a photograph and the poetic realities that abstraction permits. I use both to weave these story maps. 

 

Textures and motifs in the work include synthetic hair and headscarfs from the Beauty Supply that often reproduce animal skin patterns in contemporary palettes. Powerful pop-color camouflage for today’s Black beauties, marked down to $4.99. The repeated pinwheel pattern references a specific quilt. (Incidentally, it’s the only object I own that my late grandmother and mother also touched.) Together with other women, Grandma Martha stitched the topper at a bee on her farm in Friendship, Arkansas while my mother played underneath it, hiding in plain sight and giggling at their grown folk’s gossip. This vivid quilt was Mom’s pop-color camo. Images of Diana and Harriet work as equivalents to these stories, each woman’s trickster tools of survivance marking their presence and ongoing relevance. Mapping the cross sections of these ideas illuminates a constellation, lighting pathways back and forth across time, homeward bound.

 

Photo credits: Emi Ogata Demaderios