Paula Wilson: Toward the Sky's Back Door - by Rebecca McNamara (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Paula Wilson: Toward the Sky's Back Door breaks down perceived boundaries to connect global and local narratives through subjects as wide-ranging as the moth that pollinates Yucca plants, ancient Greek vases, West African D'mba, and modern technologies. The exhibition presents paintings, sculpture, prints, collages, and videos--with different media frequently intermixed in a single work, including a new monumental figure being shown for the first time. Using the same techniques and styles to make art for viewing on the gallery wall as for the rugs she walks on and clothes she wears, Wilson challenges the separations between art and everyday living. Often biographically oriented, her work investigates the polarities of human life, including her own identity as a biracial woman and her experiences living in both major metropolises and the small desert railroad town of Carrizozo, New Mexico."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Wilson invokes her own Black biracial identity in her mixed-media pieces, inspired by art historical traditions as much as the plants outside her door

This first major monograph features nearly two decades of work by American artist Paula Wilson (born 1975), who frequently intermixes her identity as a Black biracial artist, living in a rural desert town in New Mexico, with narratives and motifs across time and place.
Toward the Sky's Back Door documents her wide-ranging career with essays by leading scholars Taylor Renee Aldridge, Ebony Y. Rhodes and Stephanie Sparling Williams, and a new interview with the artist. Wilson embraces a both/and approach to art and living, using the same techniques, materials and motifs to make rugs and clothing as she does for art on the gallery wall. Throughout her work, little to nothing is discarded, with scraps from one artwork recycled into another, reflecting both a practice of eco-sustainability and a model for creating something new from fragments left behind. This volume presents paintings, sculpture, prints, collages and videos, with different mediums frequently intermixed in a single work, ranging in scale from small paper-mosaic work to beyond-life-size female figures.

This book was published in conjunction with Tang Museum