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2025 Ohio Artist Registry Juried Exhibition
Tanya Walker
Research and Studio Artist Maplewood StudioBio
ABOUT CREEK STAND BISCUIT ARTS IN OHIO
from Tanya Willis-Walker, B.S., M.Ed., 7th generation daughter, Research and Textile Artist
I merge the diaspora facts of my matriarchal art generations from the Alabamian Creek Stand region, to Ohio. These facts are recreated into art quilt and visual art forms or words. This diaspora is native to the African American diaspora from the deep south. It is also influenced by the FDR Urban Relocations of 1952, of Native Americans into the State of Ohio, from reservation regions. In the year of 1836, the native cottons, seeded, washed, dried and stitched for home quilts, were worked in my family roots of Alabama, and by our ancestors of Creek origins with Jewish cotton broker Abram Mordecai. Later, Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington triggered schools, so that my four generations of mothers and aunts, returned to Alabama to broaden the scope and methods of quilt making, bead workings, textiles, and sewing in our communities. The cottons were folded in the hands of the hat makers and textile artists and of our family communities from good harvests. It was my job to assist.
It was my joy, unlike the stigmas or shame, related to cotton harvest years, to create cotton plats, plug rolls of textiles, and trapunto the cloth from Jewish Peddler routes or merchants. My college art achievements in forms, drawing, math, dimensions, and color groups, mix with my research profiles and sources for exhibition themes. As I age, complications of diabetes challenge these former years of college achievements. The colors, shapes, sizes, and dimensions have evolved stronger, with cotton biscuit folds, studied from in the hands of my matriarchal quilt makers to college art critiques.
I have added a link to the profile from the Encyclopedia of Alabama. My mixed racial ancestry motivates the direction of my pen, now in larger bolder prints and with lower vision devices. SOURCES: “The Price of Whiteness’: Jews, Race, and American Identity”, Eric Goldstein, “Off-White: a memoir” by Laurie Gunst. “The Hand of Esau: Montgomery’s Jewish Community and the Bus Boycott” by Mary Stanton, “Strength to Love” by Martin Luther King Jr., “Stitched from the Soul: Slave Quilts from the Antebellum South” by Gladys-Marie Fry.
Artist Statement
I pluck the folks or themes from deep southern or urban cultures. I research these themes to sculpt, big stitch, wood carved, clay seal, or trapunto with art forms of quilts. I find heroic and everyday people profiles or human rights topics. I merge the diaspora textile art concepts of my matriarchal art generations from the Alabamian Creek Stand region, to Ohio with these themes to create an art form. The outcomes are art quilt and visual art forms or words.
The peace arts symbols and sculptures from my new studio seasons of urban cultural arts reflects quiet protests of human right conflicts or explore chaos issues with Peace Talk Exhibitions. Pictured are “Alice in Wonderland Flipped Ovah”, from the Sculpture Series, “The Poverty Bucket Sistahs”, with the Community Division of the City of Cincinnati, The Vermont Studio Center, and ADAP award of 2002. “The Paradise Clown”, is one of three soft sculpture extract of a larger work.
It is my joy, to create, carve, and mold collages into facial expressions, or lettered arts. As I age, complications of diabetes with low vision devices and technology, challenge achievements. The colors, shapes, sizes, forms, dimensions, and sketch lines, and dimensions are bolder, with cotton biscuit folds, alternative wood manipulation tools, organic clays, beading, and stones.