Peek at the Process: Installation at Postmark Center for the Arts
By Amanda Jenkinson, City of Auburn Arts Assistant
The day comes for gallery turnover at Postmark Center for the Arts. Pieces from the last exhibition, Muckleshoot: Alive and Strong, are picked up in the morning by their respective artists. The gallery walls, having suffered many nails and holes from hanging equipment, are repaired and patched, with a fresh coat of white paint. Auburn Arts staff eagerly await the arrival of artists for the next highly anticipated exhibition: SISTAHS, curated by Marita Dingus.
Postmark Center for the Arts has officially been open since September 2023, kicking off with a gallery exhibition featuring twenty-four local artists representing imagery and ideas of trees, branches, and similar growth through nature. RENEWAL: Historic Roots and Artistic Growth aimed to welcome the community into this new arts hub, with many of the exhibition’s artists depicting or taking inspiration from natural spaces and ideas of growth. The Vault Gallery was home to a timeline of Postmark’s life, starting out as a 1930’s Post Office, then a county medical center, and finally its transformation into the vibrant arts space it is today.
In January of 2024, a new exhibition was to occupy the Postmark Main Gallery and Vault Gallery. Nine incredible artists representing the Muckleshoot tribe filled the gallery space with hand carved wood, beaded accessories, and woven regalia. It was a joy to display the incredible work of Isiah Corwin, Julie James, Sam Obrovac, K. Saladin, Tyson Simmons, Joyce Starr, Donny Stevenson, Keith Stevenson, and Gail White Eagle. Demonstrations of the weaving process by Gail White Eagle were well attended by enthusiastic locals, and the same can be said about the wood carving demonstration and Muckleshoot studio tours hosted by Sam Obrovac and Tyson Simmons.
The atmosphere of a gallery turnover is bittersweet. A sense of accomplishment on the part of the artists and installation staff lingers similarly to the finality of completion, settling on the hearts of those involved. Handshakes and greetings, smiles, and departures. The gallery walls lay bare, the liminality overwhelming, disrupted only by excitement for what is to come next.
Arriving on the scene for the next show are four artists of local renown. The first to arrive is a familiar name in the City of Auburn, Marita Dingus. Marita has an extensive résumé of art shows and exhibitions up her sleeve, however for this exhibition, she will be lead curator. “I have curated before” says Marita. “It was in the 90’s, for Folk Life. It was an African American quilt show, and it was huge. We had vintage quilts and contemporary quilts, and I want to say we had around 35 quilts in the exhibition.” While curating for the African American Quilt Show, Marita met Brenetta Ward, one of the featured SISTAHS artists for this exhibition.
“I’ve known Marita Dingus for almost 30 years” says Brenetta, a quilter. Using an array of mixed media elements upon a variety of cloth, Cowrie shells, beads, printed fabric, mud cloth, and other embellishments adorn these detailed quilts, now laid pristine on a covered table, ready to be mounted on a gallery wall. Quilting runs in Brenetta’s family. “I am a third-generation quilter,” she says. “My maternal grandmother was a quilter. She taught her daughter, my aunt, to quilt. And my aunt taught me. I originally thought of quilting as a life skill or a craft. We made quilts to be used — to keep you warm. It wasn’t until I created my first wall quilt that I began to see my quilting as a form of art.”
After learning to quilt, and discovering it as a form of art, Brenetta began to take inspiration from other artists, fibers-based or not. “In the quilt and fiber art world, I am inspired by the work of my Aunt Alma Lee Holiday, Anna Williams, Faith Ringgold, Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi, Wini McQueen, Dindga McCannon, Ruth E. Carter, Aminah Robinson and Bisa Butler,” she says. “In the broader art world, my inspirations are Jacob Lawrence, Barbara Earl Thomas, Marita Dingus, Kehinde Wiley, Zora Neal Hurston, Octavia Butler and Nikki Giovanni.” After further pondering, she says, “Ultimately, I am inspired by the stories of everyday people.”
Materials collecting is the name of the game for this exhibition. Marita, as curator, has a very strong aesthetic sense for artists who find beauty in small, discarded items, or “preciousness in bits and bobs” as Debra likes to say. These are all elements of Marita’s trademark style and artistic vision. Brenetta enjoys collecting textiles, buttons, treasures, embellishments. Debra Harris-Branham, debuting for her first-ever gallery exhibition as a part of SISTAHS , is also a gatherer of recycled, reclaimed items and scraps. Debra’s mixed media pieces are, fantastically, all over the map. From melted plastic, fabric scrolls, and metal assemblages, Debra puts her years of experience taking multitudes of art classes to use. “I’ve always loved dabbling in art, creating and designing art, thus I have taken countless classes through the years from painting, collage, mixed media, wire work, metal work and jewelry making,” she says. A class is where Marita ended up meeting Debra; she was teaching at the Frye Art Museum, and in Marita’s words, “I liked her work. I mean, it was so much like my work, how could I not like it?”
A major thematic element for SISTAHS is figurative presence: people, history, and black culture. Debra’s pieces have occurrences of portraiture among elements of aged paper, fabric, and rustic items. Brenetta’s quilts include fabricprinted photographs, imagery of ancestry, black-and-white film shots of cowboys and cowgirls. Marita creates almost entirely figurative work, creating pieces that speak to how enslaved Africans were discarded, just like the materials she uses in her work. The final member of SISTAHS , Jite Agbro, collages together paper and fabric scraps to create her larger-than life encaustic assemblages.
Jite got her start in art at a young age. “I started making art after taking classes at a local art center in Seattle that was walking distance from where I lived. I was 9 or 10 years old,” she says. Jite was taking classes at Pratt Art Center in Seattle, her teacher being one of Marita’s previous students when she worked as a professor at Central Community College. Jite’s teacher made Marita aware of her talent, telling Marita, “You have got to meet this young girl. She’s incredible.”
Marita continues, “I saw her work. And it truly was incredible!” Marita submitted Jite’s name for a youth arts scholarship, which she won. This established the growing connection between the two artists.
“Ultimately, I am inspired by the stories of everyday people.”
Within the staging room, Jite’s artwork stands strong upon two heavy wood panels, one peach, one gold. “I take a lot of conceptual inspiration from things that happen culturally, cultural shifts, changes in public opinion/public attitudes,” she says. “I take a lot of inspiration from novelists and philosophers and aesthetic inspiration from vintage fashion and style.” These inspirations translate well; these beeswaxsealed works present a vintage feel, the figures wearing different outfits opposite of their reflection, representing the change in social standards.
SISTAHS , as an exhibition, is all about Black storytelling and Black beauty. In Marita’s curator statement, she explains that SISTAHS celebrates Black women making art from a diverse palette of materials, from paper, fabric, and paint to cast offs otherwise destined for landfills. Their art is rooted in traditional African and African American techniques and cultural touchstones. Each of these artists, all from the Pacific northwest, have contributed artwork that speaks to this statement, their own life experience, and use of materials. The tables in the staging room have every inch of space covered with enduring passion for Black art.
With all artworks dropped off and ready for installation, the time has come to divide and conquer, Arts Staff equipped with various hardware and tools. Three gallery walls have been moved according to Marita’s vision, sectioning the gallery into separate, individual installations specific to each artist. Jite’s work belongs on the back wall, Brenetta’s to the right, Debra’s to the left. All artists have artwork visible as soon as a visitor walks in through the front door, including Marita. She has created a piece 25 feet tall, titled Nature Girl, to be installed in the front window. Perfectly backlit by the evening sunset, she observes the gallery.
We all do.
