Clovis Blackwell
“The Covid-19 crisis has added a lot of uncertainty to my life, but I’m fortunate that it has not impacted my employment. I teach a college screen printing class that is transitioning online and I will be focusing on how to make work despite the inevitable barriers to life. Additionally, I’m making work for a solo show at a museum that is scheduled for May 9th—I’m busier than ever right now!”
Available Works
Cycles have become an important consideration in my life. Since developing rheumatoid arthritis in 2001 and going through periods of flare-ups and recovery, I’ve come to understand the impermanence of our situation. Youthful vigor gives way to debility followed by restoration, but ultimately we will die—creating space for new life. Currently I am exploring these themes through circular interlaced images of mushroom clouds and flowers in my collection, Emanations: Everyone Deserves a Fresh Start! (i.e., Let It All Burn Down).
This work is informed by my childhood fascination with post-apocalyptic sci-fi. Apocalyptic myths can be understood not as the end of all things, but as a central metaphor for the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. I’ve come to understand the significance of these myths as a means of reckoning the passage of one thing or state into another. Embracing change is a concept too often resisted by individuals who are reluctant to pay the often high emotional price for transformation. Images of circles found in nature, flowers, and nuclear weapons tests layered in vibrant and colorful intersections aim to generate multiple associations, opening up the appealing possibilities of the transformative, the life in death, the creation in destruction.