A Bahamian
artist who lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia, Lillian Blades (born 1973,
Nassau, Bahamas) strives through her personal art
practice and public art projects to create and strengthen connections. Her assemblages bring painted canvas, fabric
and found objects together, finding a post-postmodernist space between abstraction
and representation. By using
unquestionably feminine patterns and craft material in decentralized and formal
compositions, Blades finds her own way through a familiar language of cubism and the readymade.
Blades's
understanding and love of craft developed as a very young child, when she
assisted her aunt to make handmade tourist trinkets out of salvaged local
material, which they sold outside of the Dolphin Hotel in downtown Nassau. With
guidance from mentors Antonius Roberts and Brent Malone, Blades earned her
Associates of Art degree at the College of The Bahamas in 1991, before winning
the Central Bank Art Competition in 1992 in the open category. With the first place cash prize, she set off
for the Savannah College of Art and Design to earn her BFA in Textiles, but
once she began painting in oils, she switched her major to painting. In order to fund her studies, Blades worked
with Roberts and Malone to hold annual auctions of her work, allowing her to
successfully graduate in 1996 with her diploma.
Immediately
thereafter, Blades set about earning her MFA in Painting from Georgia State
University, initiating what would become a meaningful relationship with the
vibrant art community in downtown Atlanta. During this time, Blades started to take a
sculptural approach to her painting practice, removing her painted canvases from
their frames and sewing them together like quilts to engage in a feminist,
ancestral and ephemeral narrative, seen in such pieces as the Sankofa Dress and Sankofa Quilt.
In the
summer of 1999, Blades had the opportunity to attend the Skowhegan School of
Painting and Sculpture in Maine for an intensive nine-week residency program
for visual artists. While she continued
to explore her new approach to painting, she used the extensive library
resources to learn more about contemporary artists and their divergent
practices. Such an opportunity not only
motivated her to streamline her own art practice, but also opened her eyes to
the interconnectivity of creativity and the importance of context and community
to the artist.
Blades
returned to Atlanta to complete her thesis for her graduate degree in 2000,
creating A Return to the Womb, an
installation piece born out of her assemblage practice that paid tribute to a
collective ancestral experience.
Since then,
the artist has continued to live and work in Atlanta. She’s held four
exhibitions at the Sandler Hudson Gallery, which represents her work, as well
as participated in several public art projects such as the Elevate/Art Above
Ground Project in 2013, allowing her to develop such a strong presence in the city
that they consider her one of their top artists.
Such
commissioned community public art projects are in themselves important parts of
Blade’s art practice, supplementing and developing the underlying themes of
interconnectivity and bonding in her work.
Whether in the Jean Childs Young
Life Quilt Assemblage at the Young Middle School in Atlanta (2010), the Quilted Community in the East Atlanta
Library (2003-2005), or Quilted Passages
in the Atlanta Hartfield-Jackson International Airport (2002), Lillian brings
community together to explore their creativity and heritage.
Blades has
also maintained a strong connection to her home, engaging in the Bahamian
community through creative projects such as the AIDS Awareness Junkanoo Quilt (2006-2007) which brought together
over 2000 children from various family islands in the face of an all-too-common
reality in the Bahamas; the Love my
Bahamas Downtown Mural Project (2009); and a collaborative school community
assemblage with 300 Lyford Cay International School students (2013).
Blades has exhibited her
work in several National Exhibitions at the National Art Gallery of The
Bahamas, as well as held solo and group exhibitions in other gallery spaces in
The Bahamas, the United States, Trinidad, Germany, and South Africa. Her work
is in many public museum and gallery collections, as well as in private
collections around the world. She has taught Foundation Art studies at the
Savannah College of Art and Design Atlanta Campus and in 2007 completed a
four-week printmaking residency (awarded through the Fulton County Arts
Council) at the Caversham Center for Artists and Writers in South Africa.