There are pieces of our lives, most often unseen, that follow us. They show up in the things we do, the way we act, speak, breathe—they cloak us like invisible shadows, influencing what we do and who we become. The advice of a friend, the mannerisms of a sibling or parent, the care of a partner all coalesce into the entity that is you. In her first solo museum exhibition, Lillian Blades: Through The Veil at the Sarasota Art Museum (SAM), Bahamian artist Lillian Blades invites audiences to see the parts of her life, past and present, that otherwise might go unseen.
Through The Veil is, without the inclusion of auditory or video input, as much of a sensory experience as it is an art exhibition. The show is a collection of Blades’ recent and new works, wall-mounted mixed-material assemblages and “veils” that are hung from the lofty ceilings of SAM’s third floor gallery.
“It’s an accumulation of all my visual fascinations of color, pattern, light, reflections and textures in an immersive experience,” says Blades, who holds degrees in painting from SCAD and GSU. Through The Veil reflects a progression in Blades’ practice, from wall-mounted mixed-media assemblages to the hanging, quilt-like veils that populate the gallery space. When contracted to create a hanging installation piece in 2019, Blades worked to find a way to take her artwork off of the wall and into the air.
“I started taking the canvases that I’d been working with and wiring them together, but that was bulky and it was not as transparent as I wanted it to feel. So I started experimenting with different materials, like interrogation mirrors, which are made of acrylic, and you can see through but are also reflective,” says Blades. “I began playing with the materials, wiring them together so they could create the same patchwork quilt that I was creating on the wooden panels.”
The veils, stitched together with metal wire, necessitated lighter materials than that of the wooden panels. Blades’ use of materials such as acrylic play into her visual language, which includes a brilliant color palette that harkens back to her upbringing in the Bahamas. Vibrant colors, such as dazzling layers of pinks and purples that hang from the celestial-inspired veil Sanctuary are a part of who she is. “I’ve always been fascinated with color, all the way back to childhood. I had the 64-pack of crayons and I was obsessed with organizing them in a rainbow order—I’m still doing that today, with keeping everything organized, but in a form of structured chaos,” says Blades. “With the veils, I’m incorporating light, reflection and shadow which I couldn’t do with the wooden panels. It creates an experience of moving around it, it always changes and shifts, which multiplies and quadruples the diversity of the experience of seeing it.”
In both the panels and the veils, Blades doesn’t discriminate in her use of materials—anything is fair game, from industrial, commercial and architectural hardware to different types of fabric, textiles, resin and wood—but she gravitates towards things that show wear and use, that hold a story within them. “I like things that have an ornateness to them, like filigree, and I love ornate picture frames—even the back of the picture frame is interesting to me. It supports the memory of something,” says Blades. “I love that they’re always squares, rectangles, circles or ovals, those are the basic shapes that I use in the work.”
It is through those shapes, materials and colors that Blades creates what she refers to as “emotional landscapes.” Every work of hers harkens back to a piece of herself—her mother, who died in childbirth, was a seamstress—the veils becoming hanging quilts that reflect her heritage. “It feels like something my mom would have made or my ancestors would have made. In a way I feel like I’m building on the backs and shoulders of what they’ve already built and taking it a step further,” says Blades. “In learning more about my mother and her side of the family, it’s helped me understand more about myself—in pictures we look very much alike and I feel like I’m carrying the same type of creativity and mannerisms in how she did her hair, tiled floors and in the dresses that she made. It’s also a microscopic view of how I think Africans in the diaspora see their connection to Africa and the traditions that were severed from them.” For Blades, the creation of her work is not just a vocation, but a necessity. It’s something that is foundational to her—the dissection of floral dresses, fabrics and industrial materials—is her way of looking back, of peeking through the veil of the invisible shadows that surround her to this day. “The act of creating feels good,” says Blades. “I feel like my mother would be proud that I’ve done what I’ve done and that I’m carrying on her legacy based on her career and my dad as a plumber and my aunts and grandmother, who were florists.”
