John T
March 13, 2017
Gilda Snowden, looked at the world with a unique perspective and filtered it out through her work. She was known as a generous, patient, self-assured, strong woman. Her legacy as a teacher and an artist in the Detroit community has survived her, because of the amount of love and nurturance that she gave to the community and her students.
Exhibiting throughout the U.S., Mexico, Canada, and West Africa in public and private collections, Snowden's career began at Detroit's Cass Technical High School where she studied Fashion Design. Through garment construction, she learned the basics of piecing things together, and starting a personal art practice. In interviews she's stated that her early artistic interest shocked her father, who wanted her to become a doctor. This said, he became very supportive as she got her Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts in Painting degrees at Wayne State University. Her work has been featured in many publications, such as the Post, Newsweek, Neiman-Marcus Corporation, and Ameritech. Snowden is best known for her position as Interim Chair and Professor of Fine Arts at the College of Creative Studies, in which she served thirty years, because of the wealth of influence, wisdom, and care she passed on to her students.
In her Kresge fellowship video, Snowden cites some of the most liberating advice being "The thing that you have to remember is that no one can stop you from making work in your studio... the biggest success is to be able to go into your space, close the door, and look around you and see the evidence of your hard work." This philosophy propelled her practice, and she was a very prolific artist.
John T, an encaustic construction made in 1988, was considered a metaphorical portrait of her father, hosting secret elements that only the artist could truly see with clarity. The piece is almost symmetrical, but not, establishing character through color and the texture. It reflects a walk down Woodward, or Cass, combining industrial elements with earth tones and bright, graffiti colors.
Text by Emily Lane Borden