Xenobia Bailey’s work draws inspiration from many sources, including contemporary African-American music.

Contemporary Expression of an Ancient Craft:

Artist Xenobia Bailey Gives New Life to Crochet

Bailey’s works in crochet, which include costumes and colorful wall hangings constructed of concentric circles, are a far cry from the traditional shawls and doilies associated with the medium.

“Xenobia Bailey is the kind of artist who is extending what we think of as craft,” says Kate Lydon, assistant director at SCC. “She is definitely exploring uncharted waters in her medium.”

Work inspired by contemporary “funk” music

Bailey, a graduate of New York’s Pratt Institute, learned to crochet from an Italian-Swiss teacher she met while working as an artist-in-community in Brooklyn, N.Y., schools. She says that the development of crochet as a decorative needle arts form derives from the grassroots fiber arts movement of the 1960s, the “black holiness” tent revivals, and the “cosmic funk of the urban cultural movement.”

Her earliest crochet pieces, made in the mid-1980s, were hats. “I sent photos of my work to various magazines,” she explains, “and my hats were featured in Elle Magazine. It pretty much got me started as a fiber artist.” Her hats and clothing have also been seen on “The Cosby Show” and in Spike Lee’s film “Do The Right Thing.”

Xenobia Bailey surrrounds herself with some of her favorite work.

Bailey’s unique style is inspired by contemporary African-American music, particularly the funk variety. Her colorful wall hangings and garments are made of cotton and acrylic yarns and plastic pony beads. “My work is a utopian prototype for the aesthetic of funk,” says Bailey.

Bailey spent August 2002 as the SCC’s first Artist-in-Residence. The exhibit of her works, called “Paradise Under Reconstruction in the Aesthetic of Funk,” filled the main gallery where walls had been painted bright chartreuse. Her circular wall hangings “pulsated like neon signs along the Vegas Strip,” said one critic.

“To be an artist and be able to create things — it’s like fireworks every time you think about something,” says Bailey. “I try to get energy and movement from something that is not moving at all.”

Near the entrance to the SCC gallery was a mannequin dressed in a high priestess’ regalia made entirely of crocheted yarn. It’s the preferred dress of Sistah Paradise, Bailey’s mythological creation who travels to the Americas to help her enslaved people.

Creative accouterments adorning the mannequin included a multi-pocketed pouch containing a long train on which Sistah Paradise hovers above the earth as on a magic carpet.

In addition to Bailey’s large works, the exhibit included seven smaller fiber pieces that the artist refers to as “skats,” a jazz term for non-language verbal improvisation, and a series of wearables including hats and garments. Bailey describes the exhibit as a “crocheted site that illustrates a physical tribute to my ancestral lineage, known and unknown, with whom I share flesh, blood and bone since the beginning of time.”

Bailey Receives Critical Acclaim for her work

Earlier in 2002, “Paradise Under Reconstruction” was exhibited at the Stefan Stux Gallery in Chelsea (New York City), where Bailey’s work is sold, and described as “a fusing of personal cosmology and supremely funkadelic style.”

According to a gallery spokesperson, “Bailey’s bright, shrine-like wall hangings are … hot in exactly the sense that Marshall McLuhan meant it in the early 1960s. Hot media pummels the senses with stimuli, requiring the audience to do little more than sit back and absorb.”

Mary Thomas, art critic at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, reviewing Bailey’s SCC exhibit wrote, “In recent years, she’s cranked her expression up a notch, from functional ware — albeit unique — to abstract compositions that swirl across the wall in the manner of Frank Stella. Bright celestial bodies born of her ideology swirl in overlapping energy fields rather than orbits, prodding boundaries of perception ….”

Perfecting the art of crochet

While Bailey is able to support herself through sales of her crochet at exhibits and through grants, she acknowledges that her medium is a time-consuming activity and works at her art whenever she has a opportunity.

“I carry my yarn and needles with me all the time,” she says. After she has made several dozen circular mandalas in various sizes, she composes her wall pieces by laying them out on the floor. “When I get what I want,” she says, “I pin them together then attach them using an embroidery stitch.”

Bailey looks for yarn wherever she goes. “The number of shops that carry yarn are few and the selection is very limited,” she says. “Sometimes I have to order directly from the manufacturer.”

Since her student days, Bailey has also been interested and involved in theatrical costume design. She designs costumes for a small performance group of New York poets, called Revival, and recently created a circus ringmaster’s costume.

Bailey says her newest work involves a lot of technology, including projected digital images, and electrified optical threads that give off light and color and pulsate to Afro-Funk music.

She has exhibited at the Studio Museum of Harlem, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Her work is in the permanent collections at Harlem’s Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Museum of Contemporary Arts and Design (formerly the American Craft Museum).

-James Weaver is a Pennsylvania-based free-lance writer.