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Will Stokes Jr., The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, 2007. 67 pp (ISBN 0-9724556-3-9) From the dress made of Stokes’ Nude Figures yardage on its cover to the end-papers printed with a preparatory drawing for a screen-print, this exhibition catalogue is a handsome book. It contains extensive, full-color illustrations of a thirty year production of prints, drawings, paintings and fabric designs by an artist closely involved with the Fabric Workshop and Museum. Stokes primarily paints people, alone or in groups, including the presumably-imaginary nudes in an Edenic garden (Nude Figures and People, 1979), historic figures (Ben Franklin and Waverly Person, 1991), celebrities from the entertainment world (the exhibition included multiple versions of Grace Jones and Bette Midler, 1989) and friends and familiars (Landscape with Skowhegan Students and Self-Portrait, 1996); his fabric designs often feature other creatures, from birds to alligators, which he depicts with engaging personality. Most of Stokes’ drawings have a jumpy energy that he translates into the paintings through bold colors and patterned backgrounds. In both human and animal forms he privileges expressivity over anatomy, or rather makes form follow emotion. One of Stokes’ greatest strengths is his sense of patterning, which is put to maximum use in the designs for fabrics; the negative space of the grounds are as interesting and rhythmic as the figures. And he can weave those figures seamlessly into their surroundings; his alligators are flawlessly, if improbably, surrounded with foliage. He is also extremely adept at patterns with many small figures that manage to read clearly and maintain their individuality: Animals and Butterflies (1990) has a whimsical array of beasts and bugs; never mind if the elephant is the same size as a nearby caterpillar or a dog is dwarfed by a wasp. The catalogue contains an essay by Marion Bolton Stroud which emphasizes biography (and is well-illustrated with photographs), followed by short appreciations by John Ollman and Lonnie Graham, then an interpretive essay by Judith Stein. These are followed by the usual apparatus (education, exhibitions, publications, collections...) and a less usual, long list of Mentors to Will Stokes Jr, presumably acknowledged by the institution, not the artist, whose only words are in the form of a hand-written letter about one of his paintings. The catalogue design is unusual in that all the color images precede the text; the title page, appears on p. 43. This arrangement foregrounds Stokes’ work, in all its exuberance, and the decision to print the fabric designs as full-page bleeds is particularly effective. The sunflower-yellow used for the cover and text pages acknowledges the artist’s high-keyed and cheerful palette. What mystifies me, though, is the description of Stokes as self-taught by Stroud, Ollman, and Graham. Stroud’s essay follows Stokes’ education from classes run by the Print Club in his teens to instruction at Fleisher Art Memorial, PAFA, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. For thirty years he has worked at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, which also provided him with studio space and where he has been exposed to a series of artists of national and international reputation. The term self-taught seems to be the Philadelphia favorite to describe artists that elsewhere have been termed outsiders, naive, isolates or sometimes visionaries. These terms are usually applied to artists who have been marginalized by virtue of education, mental or emotional debility, and distance from mainstream art. Working for thirty years at the Fabric Workshop certainly positions Stokes as an insider, and while he may not have an MFA, he has studied at mainstream art schools. So why the need to describe him thus? His work may appeal to the aesthetic of those who favor self-taught artists, but the same can be said of Sarah McEneaney, Holis Sigler, Jean Dubuffet, and Paul Klee. He’s an artist; and this catalogue is a welcome record of his achievement.
© 2007 Andrea Kirsh and InLiquid.com; image copyright © Fabric Workshop and Museum |
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