At the Crossroad

Well represented in Louisiana with works in the permanent collection at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, seen recently at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, Shawne Major is also in Mississippi this Summer with a solo show at the Duckett Gallery located in a multipurpose building, The Mary C. O'Keefe Cultural Center of Arts and Education, downtown Ocean Springs. Ravens and Crows includes twelve pieces spread in the two well-lit rooms, representing the artist production. Called tapestries with rectangular shapes or "pelts" with appendages, possibly paws or heads. Her striking pieces need to be looked at one by one, each has a story. The colors give the tone, dramatic reds, black, sometimes whites, or sweet pink, made with various materials, cheap objects found in every household like plastic toys (made in China), false fur, wires, beads, plastic snakes, and odds and ends collected by the artist who assimilates her gathering to the habit of ravens and crows, scavengers of random objects. The results are compressed stories of lives, like Parthenope, 2010, which includes a wedding dress and forebodes the future of the bride. The objects become words to create the story, the symbolic meaning of hearts, snakes, circles...enhanced by their accumulation in the final composition. In the process of the slow work involved in the creation of the pieces, the artist transforms low art in high art, mundane objects into precious tapestries sewn by hands.
Each viewer can find a unique story making it a personal journey. Each piece is also the repository of our unconscious. our collective fears, wishes and dreams.
At the crossroad between folk art and fine art.


photographs by the author:

Hundredth Monkey, 2009
Leucosia, 2012
detail