Kitchen Table Series

As long as we are going to consider Saunders' Assemblage to reference a kitchen table, lets not forget Carrie Mae Weems and her kitchen table series. These shots were taken in 1990, just a year before Assemblage was made. We talked about Weems' work here in week nine of 52 pieces. In this photograph I see an incredibly beautiful and powerful woman who owns her space. In Saunders' piece I see a similar woman coming through. I'm guessing a mother who encouraged playfulness, by the brightly colored chair. Who kept milk and cereal on the table, and games in the house. Games that puzzled the brain and worked the mind, like Chinese Checkers. I see fruit and flowers and a big black heart. The kitchen table belongs to mom, look at Carrie Mae Weems.

Raymond Saunders, Assemblage - Links with Kiki Smith and Louise Nevelson

Take a look at this image of Assemblage. That red rectangle on the left is a piece of oilcloth. There's a Chinese checkers board. There's a chair. There's an article about the Tuskegee airmen. There are two oil paintings. There's a little of this and a little of that. Raymond Saunders collected much of this from the streets on his walks. Two other artists here at Fifty Two Pieces have also collected detritus from the streets. Most recently Kiki Smith in Week 25. And in week 24, we saw the queen of detritus, Louise Nevelson. There are any number of people who pick up "stuff" from the streets -- not all of them make works of art from those little bits and pieces though.

Here's a quote from Raymond Saunders about this method of making art. Each of the objects “finds you; you find it. You become visually receptive, attuned. You take something off the street, not knowing if you’ll use it, or how. I’ll see a sign on a phone pole, walk three blocks thinking about it, go back and get it, take it home and later discard it. Then I ask myself, Why did I ever bother carrying this across town?” So don't think yourself foolish if you pick up "stuff" off the street. You, too, could make art from all of those pieces you bring home. It seems that it's the intention of your act when you're creating that makes it art.

Assemblage by Raymond Saunders

Raymond Saunders was born in 1934, He did this piece in 1991. It is individual daily pieces of life laid out on a big flat surface next to a chair. Does that make it a table? he made this piece the same year he did a show at the Wirtz Gallery in San Francisco called Flowers From a Black Garden. A title that could fit his autobiography.