IMAGE GALLERY
Toby Sisson, Black Tears
Toby Sisson’s Black Tears consists of 385 individual teardrops on wax paper. These tears are the culmination of Sisson’s meditation on the extra-juridical killing of Black people from Trayvon Martin to Michael Brown. Black Tears is also an extension of Sisson’s meditation on James Baldwin’s book Jimmy’s Blues and Other Poems. In this, she is drawing on a word/image interplay that Baldwin offers in his long career, one that privileges explorations of the burden of antiblackness as it affects the lives of Black people and Black communities.
The tears in their distinct presentation enable the viewer to interact with a wall of mourning representing collective Black grief. This wall serves as a barrier to indifference, since it locates the multiplicity of mournful expression through each black tear. Pendulous or oblong, black, grey, or translucent, each distinct tear speaks to a longer history of aesthetic refusal—Of Blackness, of presence, of engagement and investment. Nearly four hundred tears to represent the four hundred years that African Americans have had to negotiate their humanity amidst a steady stream of antiblack violence and refusal.
Installation shot from Toby Sisson, Black Tears, Yellow Peril Gallery, Providence, Rhode Island. 385 black tears. 7 x 5.5 inches each, approximately 6.5 x 16 feet overall. Ink and beeswax on paper.
Installation shot from Toby Sisson, Black Tears, Yellow Peril Gallery, Providence, Rhode Island. 385 black tears. 7 x 5.5 inches each, approximately 6.5 x 16 feet overall. Ink and beeswax on paper.
Installation shot from Toby Sisson, Black Tears, Yellow Peril Gallery, Providence, Rhode Island. 385 black tears. 7 x 5.5 inches each, approximately 6.5 x 16 feet overall. Ink and beeswax on paper.
Installation shot from Toby Sisson, Black Tears, Yellow Peril Gallery, Providence, Rhode Island. 385 black tears. 7 x 5.5 inches each, approximately 6.5 x 16 feet overall. Ink and beeswax on paper.
2018 installation shot of Toby Sisson, Black Tears, 2015, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, Massachusetts. 144 black tears. 7 x 5.5 inches each, approximately 84 x 66 inches overall. Ink and beeswax on paper.
Toby Sisson, Black Tear, 2015. An Individual Black Tear. 7 x 5.5 inches. Ink and beeswax on paper.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My artwork examines the breadth of metaphoric meaning that can be derived from non-objective abstraction, especially psychological and social content. Through mixed media paintings, drawings and prints, I make paradoxical concepts tangible with formal elements, such as the repeated use of the color black, which acts as both presence and absence, simultaneously weighted and ephemeral.
I value the associative power of abstract images for their capacity to suggest complex ideas with basic shapes and colors. Black’s strong correlation with solemnity, mystery and race is an evocative visual tool. A spot of darkness can radically influence a field of white, yet at the same time, be utterly isolated from it. The contrast of opposites attracts and repels. I see obvious parallels in the way people interact across cultural difference, which in turn drives the graphic nature of my compositions
A volume of James Baldwin’s lesser-known verses, “Jimmy’s Blues and Other Poems”, inspired the series Black Tears. His writings chronicled the legacy of racial injustice in 20th century America as well as his personal struggles with the homophobia of that era. While responding to his work with my own, I was struck by the parallels between the racial strife that Baldwin wrote about decades ago and the violence inflicted upon Black bodies in America today. The widespread protests against these incidents have given voice to our country’s collective sorrow. As I reflected on this communal expression of grief, I began drawing black tears as a way to contemplate my own sadness. It soon became a meditative act, a process that allowed me to grieve and create a visual elegy for the loss.
ARTIST BIO
Toby Sisson earned her M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and is Associate Professor and Director of the Studio Art Program at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. In addition to drawing, painting and printmaking, Sisson’s areas of specialization include community-based service learning and collaborative public art projects. Her creative research focuses on issues of history, place and identity within the context of race and ethnicity. She exhibits her work widely, including the Teda Contemporary Art Museum, Tianjin, China; The Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, New Jersey; and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her work is in numerous public and private collections; among them, Brown University in Rhode Island and the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. Toby Sisson's home and studio practice are located in Providence, Rhode Island.