Dawn Williams Boyd’s "cloth paintings" sheer size adds to their larger-than-life, often brutal subject matter. Her exhibition, Woe, is a collection of works that reflect a lifelong critique of social injustices and racial violence, epic battles with misogyny, and physical and psychological abuses of power. There is no such thing as neutral history. Using scraps...
Dawn Williams Boyd’s “cloth paintings” sheer size adds to their larger-than-life, often brutal subject matter. Her exhibition, Woe, is a collection of works that reflect a lifelong critique of social injustices and racial violence, epic battles with misogyny, and physical and psychological abuses of power. There is no such thing as neutral history. Using scraps of fabric, needles, and thread as her tools, Boyd painstakingly “paints” the entire surface of her quilts, layer upon layer, cutting, sewing, endlessly repurposing, building the surface into a formidable, authoritative source that pulls no punches. Boyd charges seamlessly between a myriad of narratives, both distant and recent, collaging together monumental moments of American history that are so often ignored or lost. The work informs and connects people, as humorous and generous as it is unflinching and gut-wrenching. Be it accounts from the past or warnings for the future, Boyd’s paintings bring an overwhelming sense that struggle is timeless.
Dawn Williams Boyd was born in 1952 in Neptune, New Jersey. She earned her BFA at Stephens College, Columbia, MO in 1974. She has exhibited her works at Atlanta Contemporary; Wofford College, Spartanburg, SC; Southwest Art Center, Atlanta, GA; Hammonds House Museum, Atlanta, GA; Bulloch Hall, Roswell, GA; Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA; Callanwolde Fine Arts Center, Atlanta, GA; and Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, PA. Her work is included in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; The Everson Museum Of Art, Syracuse, New York; The Columbus Museum in Columbus, GA and the Richardson Family Art Museum at Wofford College in Spartanburg, SC. Boyd is represented by Fort Gansevoort, New York.
The exhibition is curated by Daniel Fuller and will travel to the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York and the Galleries at Sarah Lawerence College.
