August 19, 2024

Kathy Clifford (1948 – 1993) was a notable painter, poet, and mixed media sculptor involved in Detroit’s Cass Corridor movement and the midwestern art scene of the 1970s and 80s. Clifford studied painting at Michigan State University and holds degrees from Olivet College and Wayne State University (a B.A. in printmaking and an M.F.A. in drawing, respectively); she lived and worked in the Cass Corridor area as a student before moving her studio to the Atlas Building near Detroit’s Eastern Market. Clifford, in alignment with the postmodern ethos of other Cass Corridor artists, often appropriated objects and refashioned found materials for her sculptural constructions, culled from everyday life and reflective of the city’s socioeconomic landscape. Her oeuvre is characterized by “shrewdness, vulnerability, naiveté, intelligence, and wit”[1] and engages “events, episodes, and dreams rooted in her own life experience.”[2]                

 

                Trailer Park at the Valley of Fires (1986) is one such constructed scene depicting a silver trailer home with a brushed teal roof parked on a burnt orange landscape; there is a greenish, amorphous organic mass (perhaps some organism) out front and a naked telephone pole to the left. Decorated semicircles that recall buried tires or serpentine arches dot the edge of the asymmetrical planar foundation. The trailer itself appears poorly secured, tipping forward into the foreboding yard and injecting the scene with a tension characteristic of Clifford’s work. As fellow artist Ed Fraga notes, “[Clifford’s] dioramas had a precarious nature to their construction, which at times seem to teeter on collapse.”[3] Additionally, an oversized porcelain head peers out through the trailer’s teal-paned window as if anticipating trouble; the head’s singular presence in the darkness contributes simultaneously to the narrative suspense and intrigue (are they victim or perpetrator?).

                Clifford's work continues to be recognized for her unique presentation of personal reality and fantasy—many pieces are enhanced by a “sardonic sense of humor”[4]—embodied by Trailer Park at the Valley of Fires. Her contributions to the artistic landscape and history of Detroit, particularly as one of the few women accepted in the Cass Corridor group, remain significant despite her death at a young age. Wayne State has acquired several other works by Clifford over the years, who has been included in several historically significant shows around the Midwest, including Conflicts/Configurations at the Willis Gallery and GUTS, Detroit in the 80’s at the Herron School of Art.[5]

 

Written by Sarah Teppen

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