Portals To Places Only We Know: Spotlight On Artist Andrew Wilson

We as Black people are born from craftsmen and craftswomen. From artists that produce not only for splendor, but for survival. In earlier times, our newborn bodies were not caught between degreed and professionally practiced hands, but by those that made magic. The owners of these hands—weavers of baskets, farmers of land, bakers of bread, and threaders of tiny needles.

In the internet age, there are memes and other internet postings that exist to confirm that all Black folks are indeed rooted the same. That we share collective experiences that obliterate geographical borders and pass through generations.

The multidimensional work of Bay Area craft-based artist Andrew Wilson reroots those of us belonging to Blackness, and aims to educate those incongruous with this identity. 

In his most recent work, Andrew has returned to the craft that initially bent him into his artistry. In an investigation of “quilting as technology,” Andrew fabricates portals to places we’ve been and to those we have yet to go. In 2013, the year of his grandmother’s passing, Andrew inherited all of her leftover fabrics and began designing from them.

“Quilting becomes a means to commune with the deceased.” Andrew Willson told The Block. “Not only did these fabrics live with my grandmother, they lived with my mother, and they’ve lived with me. So we have the spirit particles of my grandmother, attached to the spirit particles of my mother, that then are bound together with my hand. So I think in that way, this combination becomes a gateway.”

Having been displaced here in Charlotte by Covid-19, during what would have been the length of his McColl Center residency, Andrew haphazardly began designing pin cushions, also from fabrics left by his late grandmother. The artist has set a goal to produce one pin cushion for each year of her life— the collection being completed upon reaching 87 cushions in total.

“Black folks have always been given the discard and debris, and are then told to make it beautiful. These works act as gateways and portals to another beautiful dimension that we alone have the key to.”

Early years

Growing up in the Bay Area, Andrew was known by his family as a curious, independent child who was most fulfilled when left to make his own decisions. At the age of five when his parents divorced, his free willed nature morphed into a rebellious and often angry spirit, leaving his mother searching for ways to creatively engage her child and curb his behavioral issues. The best option seemed to be to have Andrew spend time with his grandmother in San Francisco. She began teaching him to sew and quilt, practices that would kickstart the development of his career as an artist. 

In his teenage years, Andrew made the decision to attend a private boarding school in Arizona where he headed the first Student Government Association. He learned just what it meant to not only be an advocate for himself, but for others as well. Unfortunately because of this position, and due to his being one of very few Black male students, he was quickly pegged as an angry, rebellious student, and was eventually expelled from the school. Back in Oakland where he completed his high school education, Andrew continued his work as a student advocate and leader taking part in the city’s All City Council and the student government of the district.

It was also during this period that Andrew became an intern at the Studio One Art Center where he was exposed to a wide range of media and art forms. Upon graduating, Andrew made up his mind to study jewelry making, despite the disapproval of his family and peers.

Career life

In addition to studying jewelry, Andrew continued to expand upon his study of crafts throughout his undergraduate and graduate years. Also a lover of spoken word, he has spent nearly ten years working behind the scenes of youth poetry slam festival, Brave New Voices. One evening in a late planning session for the festival, Andrew received the news that he was being awarded the Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Award. Not only would he be an award recipient, he would be the inaugural $40,000 prize winner. Once he was able to get over the initial shock of having won, Andrew immediately went to work applying the funds towards several projects including metal works, casting bronze cotton husks, producing various pieces of clothing and other material goods, and even designing a piece of furniture.

The American Empire style chair that Andrew would eventually include in his thesis exhibition, was conceptualized after coming across an article talking about a family’s heirloom chair. That chair was sent out to be reupholstered, and was found to be stuffed with cotton and slave hair.  Inspired by this discovery, Andrew worked with a furniture designer to construct a similar chair with poplar wood, seed cotton, and hair generously donated by his brother who had recently cut off his mohawk.

Although his thesis exhibition beautifully represented the culmination of his artistry up to this point in his career, Andrew describes the most pivotal point of his life’s work as being his solo exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora in 2018. In this exhibition, Andrew investigated the ways in which we hold our ancestors in the present, and what practices enable us to carry them into the future. In this show titled “Equivalencies: Abandoned Bodies,” he included not only the American empire chair, but a full set of regalia, silk durags, self portraiture, and his grandmother’s sewing machine. 

Also included in this exhibition was fifteen pounds of cotton, and fifteen pounds of pure Atlantic Ocean sea salt. The salt served as a reminder of myth (or truth), that salt contains the dead bodies of ancestors carried over during the Middle Passage—either pushed or voluntarily choosing the sea over slavery.

In the olden days, Black people often shared amongst themselves that eliminating salt from the diet might just make us light enough to fly back home. While a salt free diet has yet to be proven as a way to return to the Motherland, art is able to provide us another means of transport.

You can find more information on Andrew Wilson through his website aiwart.com, and on his Instagram page @drewberzzz.