Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>> The waterfront might be all about change and transformation in the years ahead.
But one thing that won't ever change is the power of art to transform culture and history.
Here's a pie profile of Seattle artist Marita Dingus.
∂∂
>> I love history.
I love where we've been, I love memories, nostalgia.
History is all of that.
It helps inform how to get to the present, the mistakes we make in the past, if we know our mistakes in the past, maybe we can get it right in the future.
∂∂
History informs my art.
My name is Marita Dingus, and I'm a visual artist.
∂∂
As a little girl, I drew all the time, when I was in fourth grade.
>> Come on!
>> A nun was having us draw pictures of the blessed *** Mary and Jesus, and I drew one, and she thought it was so good that she mimeographed it for everybody in the class to color.
Early on, I knew I was going to be an artist.
Most of my inspiration comes from looking at African art.
∂∂
In high school, I started doing all these portraits of black people.
I would get books, all kinds of national geographic, any type of African book that shows pictures of African people.
I also want to Morocco for a summer in Morocco art program.
It was like nothing I had never seen before.
The visual, ornate, beautifully colored ceramic tile, so that the entire building becomes a work of art.
The people, so warm, so hospitable.
Everybody was brown, so everybody looked like me, and that felt really good.
This is what said, okay, I'm going to be an artist, I'm going to investigate and push the idea of making African art.
∂∂
>> My name is Vicky Halper and I'm the curator of the Marita Dingus exhibitions that are at the northwest African/American museum.
∂∂
Marita went to art school the way most students do in the United States.
Art really began to make sense to her when she started addressing her African/American heritage and thinking of her art in an African, an African/American tradition, rather than in a western European tradition.
>> So in graduate school, I said enough.
I want to take classes in the black studies program, and I want art history credit.
And my graduate committee said fine.
>> One of the other things that influenced her work was coming across all these amazing materials that people would throw out, things that we might think are just junk or that are ugly, or that are dirty, but she saw the possibility for creating art.
>> I make art from discarded materials, recycled materials.
This is a bed spread crocheted by my grandmother.
I think she made maybe three of these, maybe four.
This one was made by my mother.
And it's machine stitched.
It's something that I'm comfortable with because of my mother and my grandmother, but also this whole idea of me using things that people no longer see value in, that's important to me.
>> What is valuable for me about her art is this reuse of materials, the tension I find in her art between the colorfulness and exuberance of the body and the quietness, in fact, painfulness of many of the faces in her work.
So the duality is quite interesting.
She wants to celebrate, and yet she also wants to memorialize at the same time.
And when you see the faces and the rawness, the pain, the quietness, in those faces, you're sort of brought back to an entire history of African/American enslavement that is in contrast and creates depth with the exuberance I think of her other work.
And I think there's a real power in that duality.
>> I feel it's my responsibility to carry African culture along, to present it to the public, to keep it alive, to keep it growing, to keep it in front of the public's face.
African culture is our culture.
That's how I see myself.
That's my responsibility, to keep African culture alive.
∂∂
∂∂
>> The story about Marita Dingus was produced in conjunction with the PBS series "the African/Americans, many rivers to cross."
You can find out more at PBS.org/manyrivers.
And you can connect with artist Marita Dingus at maritadingus.com.
∂∂ 00:06:01.693, ∂∂