Alice Walker's Discovery Of Black Women's Artistic Creativity

Alice Walker is the first one to draw our attention to the necessity of going "in search of our mothers' gardens" if we are ever to truly understand and appreciate the artistic creativity of black women. Walker attaches great importance to the quest to uncover the artistic lives of black women ancestors, because if we did not then we would by default support the idea that black women had not produced any worthwhile cultural products, since the harshness of these women's lives often precluded them from becoming celebrated artists.Women's artistic creativity has long been devalued throughout history. There are no women equivalents for Michelangelo or Picasso, any more than there are black women. In 1979 the American artist Judy Chicago exhibited her large installation, The Dinner Party, at the San Francisco Museum of Art. This is a collaborative multi-media work consisting of an open triangular table covered with embroidered cloths and set with 39 place settings. Each place setting commemorates an ancient goddess or important woman from western history such as Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, and includes needlework designs and ceramics decorated with images which suggest female genitals. The table is placed on what Chicago called the "Heritage Floor," a polished porcelain surface on which are inscribed the names of 999 women. The exhibition provoked a storm of controversy. Whatever compliments or criticisms it might have received, it did pose a subversive, alternative female tradition to art history through the use of traditional female skills.But by a careful observation of The Dinner Party, we find something noteworthy: in its guest list of "great," were seen implicitly females of white and middle or upper middle class. Why have there been no great black women who could be added to this list? Virginia Woolf in her A Room of One's Own claims that a woman who wants to create something needs a room of her own and enoughmoney to support her. A black woman has neither. And in many cases, the fact is that a middle class white woman who wants to be an artist has to hire a working class person, often a black woman to relieve her of the domestic labor. One woman's liberation may result in the oppression of another. This black woman is the person who cleans the "room of one's own." How could these women have time and energy to keep alive their artistic creativity? Or do they even have it?Then Walker turns to her mother's gardens to find the answer. She thinks that we have constantly looked high, when we should have looked high—and low.In "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens," Walker gives a personal account of her mother with her gardens. Whatever rocky soil she lands on, she turns into a garden, a garden magnificent with life and creativity. She works in her flowers with her personal conception of beauty. Mother's garden is not only the demonstration of her artistic gift, but her indomitable spirit to make the best of life in the worst of situation. Mother creates gardens and life as well. Guided by her heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength, Walker claims, in search of her mother's gardens, she found her own.In "Everyday Use," Walker gives credit to black women's artistic creativity exemplified in the handmade quilts. By presenting the two different attitudes in appreciating the quilts—to hang them on the wall for appreciation or to put them into everyday use, Walker wants us to know the real value of the quilts. The quilts not only demonstrate black women's genuine imagination, but their special feelings. And within the intricate weavings and colorful designs of the quilts lie the very fabrics of black women's lives. They weave their lives into the quilts out of the fragments. Hence, their artistic creativity can be best demonstrated and inherited in life.Sewing in The Color Purple, in a broad sense, includes clothes-making, quilting, embroidery, and other types of clothworking. For Celie, sewing is her language in a world that denies her expression. By sewing, Celie turns her genuineimagination into beautiful clothes and quilts, in which we can find her love for her children, sisterhood with other black women and her yearning for better life. Most important, through sewing by herself and with other black women, Celie gradually realizes her self-worth and the strength of her black female community. Her selfhood is reconstructed by needle and thread. Meanwhile, because of the participation of black women, white men and women, and African men and women, sewing connects people across sex, race and nation.Through the studies of black women's domestic activities, this thesis analyses Alice Walker's discovery of black women's artistic creativity. Alice Walker suggests rendering a new approach to black women's artistic creativity, that is, to detect black women's artistic creativity in their unique black female experiences, best exemplified in the domestic activities they are engaged in, such as gardening, quilting and sewing; black women's artistic creativity is represented in two respects: black women can create works of high aesthetic and pragmatic significance; and more importantly, they can integrate their unique sentiments and experiences into their works.