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St. Paul painter Ta-Coumba Aiken brings joyous art to Bloomington
Back in 1955, when he was just 3 years old, St. Paul artist Ta-coumba Aiken started scribbling on scraps of paper and church programs. Those childish loops and squiggles were the earliest evidence of an artistic calling that has shaped Aiken's life as a muralist, art educator and painter.
His joyous show "Metamorphosis -- To Be or Not to Be," at the Bloomington Art Center through Feb. 20 -- adds another dimension to his prolific career: spiritual healer. The show's 52 paintings are a virtual autobiography in paint, a celebration of the family ties, hard work, generosity and vision of a better world that sustains Aiken and is his gift to viewers.
Aiken's goals and beliefs, expressed in quotations printed on the gallery walls, are direct and hopeful in this often-troubled world.
"I create my art to heal the hearts and souls of people by creating positive imagery," he explains in one.
"We are all interconnected," reads another.
"Art should never be separated from the people," says a third.
Eye-dazzlers all, the paintings explode with exuberant color and a matrix of overlapping loops and lines. They can seem confusing at first, apparently abstract tangles of paint that recall Jackson Pollock's drizzled masterpieces.
But the inherent order and design of Aiken's canvases soon leap to the fore. Not abstractions at all, they are densely layered drawings in oil, their overlapping images organized with quilt-like precision.
The largest piece, a lush 9-foot-long canvas called "Power," even looks a bit like a quilt with its central figures emerging from panels of teal, gold and black. A painted grid cleverly composed of rectangles, triangles and circles provides the structural underpinning. Faces and figures are woven into geometric forms, where they retain their individuality even as they blend into the larger tapestry. Jazzy lines and dot patterns reminiscent of Australia's aboriginal paintings add yet another layer of complexity.
Other paintings allude to Aiken's African-American heritage and the religious traditions of his childhood. "Southern Ways," is a symphony of summery blue, yellow and green from which emerges a figure wearing a field-worker's traditional straw hat. A square canvas titled "Call and Response," is a sea of brown faces and waving arms, suggestive of a spirited church service.
One section of the show is an almost chapel-like space in which rectangular and circular canvases glow with the colors of stained-glass windows. Titles such as "Grow in Grace," "Healer Spirit," "Mother's Love and Protection," reinforce the show's meditational overtones.
"I hadn't planned to do a show that was so seemingly preachy from the titles," Aiken said in a recent interview. "I'm surprised that things my parents said to me have come out in the titles. "Grow in Grace" -- that's a very religious title. And people have pointed out a mother-and-child, but all I am trying to do is to capture all the images I see as fast as I can before they go away."
He said the figures in "Power" and other paintings often refer to the women -- especially his mother and grandmother -- who were so important in shaping his own life.
"I've learned most of the things I've learned from women," he said. "I had a father who was clearly there, but my mother and grandmother made me strong with faith."
Aiken grew up in Evanston, Ill., but his parents and grandparents were from South Carolina and brought some of the customs and attitudes of the old South with them, especially their generosity, deep spirituality, strong sense of family and respect for elders. His father was a garbage collector who would spy interesting discards -- chairs, fabric, mirrors -- and bring them home to Ta-coumba's mother, who made quilts and refurbished furniture. In particular, he remembers an old bureau that his mother stripped, painted glossy black, and then embellished with dashes of gold. When a friend admired it, she immediately gave her the bureau.
"I was a little stunned because I was still studying it, but it gave that woman so much joy," Aiken said of the gift. "That's what I'm trying to do with my paintings."
His mother was very spiritual and had a gift of prophecy, Aiken recalled. When she died of breast cancer on his birthday, he felt that the torch of her spirit had been passed to him.
As a young man during the "angry time of the '60s," Aiken said he was stirred by the black-pride movement and the civil-rights struggles. At the same time, he was marked by his family's deep spirituality and mixed-race heritage. His father was part Irish and Mexican, his mother part Cherokee.
"That could be why I do all the layering," he said. "To grow up as an African-American male and be able to say this world would be much better if we could see we're all part of one tapestry -- that's what I want to do with these pieces."
Metamorphosis: To Be or Not to Be
What: A joyous show of spiritual paintings by St. Paul artist Ta-coumba Aiken.
When: Thru Feb. 20,2004.
Where: Bloomington Art Center, 98th St. and Old Shakopee Rd., Bloomington.
Tickets: Free. 952-563-8745.
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