Nancy VanDevender: Picking Cotton - Mississippi To Detroit

This installation is the culmination of research that began as a look into the role of cotton and slavery in the historical and decorative evolution of the ruffle.

Looking at how Victorian and European influences filtered into the Harlem Renaissance and how that era paved the way for the Civil Rights Movement, the artist is focusing on rearranging and recreating relationships through character development and set construction.

Layering image upon image the entanglement suggests the intricacies in deciphering truth. Combining the designs as flattened marks on skin, cloth, and papered surfaces, new identifiers challenge old patterns of narrative.

Installed as staged interiors, the print and the projection are investigated as backdrops for how image is transferred culturally through both fiction and history. The dual nature of the forum as a place for intimate reception and public presentation is constructed through the use of the parlour as a platform and setting for exchange.

About The Artist:

After spending a year at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Sculpture and Fiber and Material Studies, Nancy VanDevender spent two years in Bloomfield Hills,
Michigan at Cranbrook Academy of Art to complete the MFA program in Fiber.

During the past year her work has been shown at the Anton Art Center in Mount Clemens, Michigan, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, PA, and at Daimler Chrysler, Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Germany She is currently part of the Studio Artist program at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center.