Xenobia Bailey
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Xenobia Bailey (born 1955, in Seattle, Washington) is an American fine artist, designer and fiber artist best known for her eclectic crochet African-inspired hats[1] and her large scale crochet pieces and mandalas. [2]
Contents
Early life
Born Sherilyn Bailey in Seattle in 1955, in the 80s she changed her name to Xenobia for the warrior queen of ancient Palmyra[3] and made her way to New York. She began her professional life as a costume designer for the now defunct Black Arts/West, then studied crochet at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.[4][3]
Affirmative action took her to the University of Washington[3] where, she says, "the whole world opened up to me." She discovered ethnomusicology, the study of music and culture from around the world. She followed it with courses in tailoring and millinery at Seattle Central Community College.[3]
Work
Her large scale crochet pieces and mandalas consist of colorful concentric circles and repeating patterns. Her pieces are often connected to her ongoing project Paradise Under Reconstruction in the Aesthetic of Funk.[5]
Bailey's technique, of mostly circular rows of single crochet, forms a fabric classified as tapestry crochet in flat, geometric, highly-colored designs influenced by African, Chinese, and Native American and Eastern philosophies, with undertones of 1970s "Funk" aesthetic. Her signature stitch is a flowy line, as if it is dripping. She calls it the "liquid stitch".[3] Bailey has a hat shop on Etsy.com featuring her crown-like creations. Her hats have been featured in United Colors of Benetton ads, on The Cosby Show, and in the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing[6] (worn by Samuel L. Jackson as DJ Mister Señor Love Daddy). She credits her shift from hats to walls, to Chicago artist Nick Cave.[3]
In 2003, her designs were commemorated in the form of an Absolut Vodka advertisement entitled "Absolut Bailey."[7] Bailey has been artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation in New York City. Her work has been exhibited at the Studio Museum of Harlem,[8] the Jersey City Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
Collections
Her work is in the permanent collections at Harlem's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Allentown Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Arts and in the Museum of Arts and Design.[9] Some of her crochet work was transformed into mosaics for the New York City Subway's 34th Street – Hudson Yards station.[10]
References
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- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 "The Supernaturalist – Xenobia Bailey and How She Got That Way" article by Jen Graves, in The Stranger, November 2011 [1]
- ↑ "Tremendously Terrific Tapestry Crochet", article by Pamela, September 2014 [2]
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- African-American artists
- American costume designers
- American fashion designers
- American women installation artists
- Dollmakers
- Milliners
- 20th-century women artists
- 21st-century women artists
- 1955 births
- Living people
- Artists from Seattle, Washington
- Pratt Institute alumni
- University of Washington alumni
- 20th-century American artists
- 21st-century American artists
