April 12 - JUNE 19
April 12 - JUNE 19
SUDDENLY MORE WOMAN THAN CHILD
Blackness and black womanhood are the central themes in Knox’s work. Suddenly More Woman than Child explores Jill’s life map from a developing 14-year-old to present day motherhood. The journey from adolescence to motherhood as a black woman comes with great triumphs and great sorrow. Suddenly More Woman than Child is an intimate look into Jill's 25 years of fear, love, triumph and pain. Jill shares pieces of this journey in her solo exhibition through bold text, the use of yarn, acrylic paint, and gold leaf.
The Chaotic Emotion of Adolescence | 36” x 36” | $10,000
(from the short story “Marigolds” by Eugenia W. Collier)
An excerpt:
“I feel again the chaotic emotions of adolescence, illusive as smoke, yet as real as the potted geranium before me now. Joy and rage and wild animal
gladness and shame become tangled together in the multicolored skein of fourteen-going-on-fifteen as I recall that devastating moment when I was suddenly more woman than child…”
’T Ain’t No Promise Land| 44” x 36” | SOLD
A note from the artist:
“In the fall of 1996, as I rode the escalator down from the third level of the Stamford mall, I could feel a searing gaze from a man lingering at the bottom by the railing on the left. I was 14, he was…30? As I exited he said, with a pushed down tone and eyes a hair squinted, “what up, slim?” followed by a suggestive smile. I was….. flattered? Disgusted? Excited? Scared?
Later that day I was told that boys only liked me for my 34C breasts that popped up 2 years earlier…
That same feeling returned. It was stronger at that moment. That feeling was shame.”
Held Life Always in the Palm of One Hand | 30” x 30” | $15,000
(from the short story, “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker.)
The text that wraps the frame:
“…[she] wanted nice things: a yellow organdy dress…black pumps to match a green suit she’d made from an old suit somebody gave her. She was determined to stare down any disaster in her efforts. Her eyelids would not flicker for minutes at a time. She had a style of her own, and knew what style was. Dresses down to the ground. A dress so loud it hurts your eyes…yellows and oranges enough to throw back the light of the sun. Earrings gold, too, hanging down to her shoulders. Bracelets dangling and making noises when she moves her arms up to shake the fold of the dress out of her arm pits. The dress is loose and flows as she walks. She put on sunglasses that hid everything above the tip of her nose….”
Reflections of the Firmly Rooted | 24” x 26” and 38” x22” | $4,000 (set)
Text on mirrors pulled from the short story, “Jesse” by Rosemarie Robotham
An excerpt:
“…our relatives turned up everywhere. Most were handsome, coffee-skinned, sharp-eyed, erect, and they had clothed themselves in the mantle of being special, with no thought whatsoever that they could be otherwise.”
Text from “In a Sentimental Mood”
Music composed by John Coltrane, lyrics by Manny Kurtz, but sung by Ella Fitzgerald.
“In a sentimental mood
I can see the stars come through my room
While your loving attitude
Is like a flame that lights the gloom
On the wings of every kiss
Drift a melody so strange and sweet
In this sentimental bliss
You make my paradise complete
Rose pearls do seem to fall
It's all like a dream to call you mine
My heart's a lighter thing
Since you made me this night a thing divine
In a sentimental mood
I'm within a world so heavenly
For I never dreamt That you'd be loving sentimental me”
Dancing After Dark…Dancing With Jack | 24” x 48” | $18,000 (set)
The Unreal. The Fever Dream. The Imaginings in My Head | 62” x 49” | $25,000
Text on frame from the song “Knocks Me off my Feet” by Steve Wonder
A note from the artist:
“In the years since I have experienced the greatest loss of my time thus far, I have seen grief and the idea of grief take on shapes and evolve in ways that both made sense to me and did not make sense to me. This piece is the only visual expression of my grief that makes sense to me.”
*Can also HANG Vertically.
And I, Too, Have Planted Marigolds | 18” x 36” | $7,500
(from the short story “Marigolds” by Eugenia W. Collier)
An excerpt:
“Lottie‘s house was the most ramshackle of all our ramshackle homes. The sun and rain had long since faded its rickety frame siding from white to a sullen gray.… a brisk wind might have blown it down and the fact that it was still standing implied a kind of enchantment that was stronger than the elements….
Miss Lottie’s marigolds were perhaps the strangest part of the picture. Certainly they did not fit in with the crumbling decay of the rest of her yard. Beyond the dusty brown yard, in front of the sorry gray house, rose suddenly and shockingly a dazzling strip of bright blossoms, clumped together in enormous mounds, warm and passionate and sun golden…
…there are times when the image of those passionate yellow mounds returns with a painful poignancy. For one does not have to be ignorant, and poor to find that this life is as barren as the dusty yards of our town. And I, too, have planted marigolds.”
Oh, Freedom is Mine | The Resin Collection Frame | 30” x 40” | Not for sale
Texts from “Feeling Good” by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for the musical “The Roar of the Greasepaint” but in our house we listen to the Nina Simone version.
“Oh, freedom is mine
And I know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life for me
I'm feeling good ”
About Jill Knox
Jill Knox, originally from New York, has lived in Los Angeles for 14 years, and the last 5 of them in Pasadena.
Jill is an interdisciplinary artist and academic. She began experimenting with yarn in her work, her go-to material, while obtaining her MFA in theater arts from Brown University. Though her creative wingspan is wide, citing “artist, actor, and educator” as her professions, she finds visual art to be the most satisfying area to work in. Raised by two art collectors/museum board members in an impeccably curated home, Jill finds her life as an artist to have been an inevitability.