Knowledge Artist, Verneda Lights : Week of July 20, 2009

[Verneda Lights]

Greetings Fellow Artists! Welcome to Artists2Artists Knowledge Feature. My name is Verneda Lights and I live in the Greater Atlanta, Georgia area. I not only live in the South, I am of the South, and I love being a Southern Black woman. Being raised in the Carolina Low Country, the middle child of 7 children born to a Marine Corps father and housewife/ teacher mother, I grew up speaking the dialect known as “Gullah” as well as the king’s english. I am the descendent of West African slaves, White, French, Spanish settlers, and American Indians who inhabited the Low Country area as early as the 15th Century. Some of my ancestors were healers, writers, and artists. We even have a family name derived from the spanish word “escribir” (to write). My family is known for being highly expressive, and aggressive, and have been known to “hurt folk” who rubbed them the wrong way.

At the age of 3, my mother taught me how to read by allowing me to create verbal captions for wordless cartoons (like Henry) in the newspaper. It was also at this age that I told my mother I was going to be a doctor. I had life threatening childhood asthma, which caused me to miss many days at school. My mother gave me reading and math lessons so that I wouldn’t fall behind in schools. My brothers and sister saw to it that I had all my homework assignments. When I was 9 years old I decided I would be a writer as well, and I started to write free style verses. Poetry became a passion, and I developed a lifelong love of reading and learning.

I am a child of the Civil Rights Movement. I remember not being able to go the the library, and having to sit in the balcony at the movies. I remember Martin Luther King Jr., Malcomb X, and John F. Kennedy as if they were still alive. I remember all too well when and how they died. I was educated at Robert Smalls Elementary School. My teachers were kind, highly literate, inspiring individuals who allowed me to assert myself and navigate mentally and spiritually through math, sciences, and literature. In 8th grade, I was sent to the formerly all white Beaufort Junior High, where I got along with my classmates and excelled in my school work. High School was not a problem. As my teacher, Pat Conroy (yes, THE Pat Conroy) wrote in my high school yearbook, I delighted in my role as “top cat.” I graduated from Beaufort High in 1970 with a GPA of 4.4 (The advanced classes I took in English and French, counted 5.0 points). I left the South for the first time in 1970 to attend Bryn Mawr College.

My skills and reputation as a poet expanded Bryn Mawr. I majored in History and premed studies. Graduated with Honors in 1974. Started medical school at The University of Pennsylvania. I continued to write and give poetry readings. Married to a local Philadelphia jazz musician, and started my own poetry performance unit called “Rikki Lights & The Gilliam Brothers Band.” The band was an all male five piece unit. The group also employed 5 dancers, choreographer, lighting specialist, and roadie. We performed in concert venues from NYC to DC. Performing provided extra money for me to purchase all my medical school books. I was determined to own all my books. That way, no one could deny me the right to hold or read them. I always studied at home, refusing to cultivate any dependence upon the library. Just in case the librarian was racist. All through high school, college, and medical school, I considered myself a wordsmith and performance artist. There were pictures in my head, but at this point poetry was my brush. I painted words and sent them spinning into the air for the audience to catch. It was big fun, and I enjoyed myself utterly. Performance poetry and medicine seemed like the most natural thing in the world for me to do, because I considered medicine to be an art. Words & music are potent medicines.

Following medical school I completed a 3 year residency in Internal Medicine. I opened my own medical center and practiced both traditional allopathic and alternative medicine. The patients were extremely ill. For over 20 years I saw patients in my office, made rounds at the hospital, managed pre and post operative and ICU care, and was on call almost every night. I stopped writing poetry because there was no longer enough time for me to be me.

I left the practice of medicine in 1999 in order to re educate myself and move further along in developing my identity as an artist. At the time the only arts I considered as my own were poetry, performance, and singing. I took a course in molecular biology at Princeton. Went back to Bryn Mawr and learned how to speak Spanish. I started to become computer literate, and began to renew relationships with family members.

Fast forward to September 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon, and murdered the passengers of flight 93 left me speechless. I was speechless in part because I had seen the disintegration of the twin towers numerous times in a recurrent dream that had plagued me since childhood. The clouds of dust and people running from obvious peril as if emerging from a furnace was a nightmare that I had come to call “The World Chaos Dream.” My worst nightmare had been a premonition, and I was lost for words.

Agitation and restlessness continued day and night. I would sit for hours in front of the computer, dissecting it, determined to become fluent in its use. Then I stumbled upon a small program called “Paint.” I opened it simply because I had recently come to know that you clicked on a icon to see what it was supposed to do. Well, Paint opened up, and I saw many small boxes of color arranged in a palette. Then click, more colors, some of which I had never seen before. Exploring these colors calmed me in a way that was decidedly pharmaceutical in onset. Wondering if colors were somehow an endorphin trigger and serotonin release factor, I became determined to make “color therapy” a part of my daily routine. When I learned that 24 bit true color gives a palette of 16 million unique colors my scientific mind was ecstatic.

I clicked on the blue e, like a hitch hiker sticking out a thumb, and landed in Oz. The door to the Emerald City was a program called Paint Shop Pro 3. I downloaded this program using a dial up connection; which meant I had to wait all night for the download to complete. I read everything I could come across about computer graphics programs. I downloaded PhotoShop3, Dreamweaver 3, and went color and webpage crazy. I prayed while staring at the electronic canvas, and with mouse in hand I merged with the software programs and out came “Beauty for ASHES: A 911 Art Memorial.” A selection of visualized grief and healing, the exhibit was published on the Internet in late September, 2001. I called my site, e-graphx digital fine art gallery, and registered for the domain www.e-graphx.com. The art I created with just the use of computer graphics programs is called pure digital fine art. If images are imported into the computer and used in the image, then it becomes mixed media. I now own a Mac laptop loaded with Adobe Creative Suite CS4. Time flies when you're having fun.

I am very fond of digital fine art because it allows me to economize on space, and I don’t have to worry about irritating chemicals, and brush cleaning. I also enjoy working with my hands, doing works on paper and canvas. When creating in 3D space, I tend to "organify" my canvas, working to texturize the surface, until I sense that I have imbued it with my thoughts and feelings. Layer, texture, layer, sling paint, texture, paint, etc is a simplified way to describe my process of art creation.

Since the first computer based “Aha” moment, I have enrolled in fine art classes in order to develop mastery over more graphics programs, web authoring software, as well as brick and mortar art tools. I have also started to take photographs. I prefer drawing over painting.

One of my favorite actions while creating any art work whether digital or traditional, is to merge with the canvas as if it is a parallel universe. I look within and around inside the canvas to see what it is. The image will declare itself, at which point I strive to maintain image integrity. With traditional art, I sling color around, turn the canvas upside down, place it across from where I lay my head at night, and watch the sun rise and set upon it. Watching the rising and setting of the sun across the color patterns tells me what the image is. I mark it out with chalk and fill in the rest. The digital pieces pretty much work the same way. Splash. splash, color, color, stare (meditate on Scriptures is a more precise description) until the light sculpture reveals itself. I work until I feel the work is complete, then I give it a name.

Click on this link to see slide show: http://cid-c8540da9fe306a32.skydrive.live.com/play.aspx/Verneda%20%20Lights/world%7C_invisible%7C_4%7C_adj2%7C_wm%7C_72dpi%7C_eff%7C_vlights.tif?ref=2

[Slone Fries]

I know exactly what you mean. I know my past and presence is confusing to most, so I leave it out of the picture, it is easier for people that way. However, I have only really seemed to find here, in an artist group, human beings with the most amazing souls. Day after day I see the same types of souls passing in and out of my life but there is no life in their souls. I am beginning to wonder if artist of all types are so filled with life that eventually it has to spill out onto paper, music, words, the pc:>. I would have never guessed that was a photograph it looked like a painting. You are truly an extraordinary woman who I am thankful just to have felt your breeze upon this earth.

[Verneda Lights]

Thank you, Sloane. It is said that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. I believe that men are made in the image of God: Triune in nature (body, soul, spirit). Being born of The Creator, we create and re-create. Artists, perhaps, feel a need to practice creation in ways that are peculiar to the pathways of gifting. Whether words, photographs, painting, drawing, cooking, sewing, are all infused with the breath and genius of the life we have been gifted to live, share, perpetuate, and re-create. I am blessed to be able to share my thoughts with you and the artists in this forum. If ever there was a time for sharing, learning, stretching, and launching out into deep waters, it is now.