Weep No More, My Lady (Oh! Weep No More Today): Love, Violence, Printmaking, and Kentuckian Futurity
Language
English (en)
Date of Award
Spring 5-7-2025
Degree Name
Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA)
Restricted/Unrestricted
Unrestricted
Abstract
Situated within a regressive political climate, this essay considers the writer’s thesis artwork Weep No More, My Lady as a simultaneous account of Southern gendered violence and a desire for healing. Through personal and historical connections to Kentucky’s material culture, the work navigates binaries of class, race, and gender that have dictated the dominant contemporary conception of the region. Placing the competing forces of care and brutality in dialogue, Weep No More, My Lady translates these theoretical challenges into formal attributes. The work suggests modes of making — stitching, unraveling, tearing — can act against the construction and naturalization of hierarchy in the United States. Similarly, its use of printmaking mirrors historical discourse, since printmaking is both archival and able to meaningfully break from its own repetitive precedent. Therefore, Weep No More, My Lady attempts to reconcile a harmful past with sentimental longing, seeing a way forward in the process.
Mentor/Primary Advisor
Jamie Adams
Recommended Citation
Brown, Madison and Brown, Marshall, "Weep No More, My Lady (Oh! Weep No More Today): Love, Violence, Printmaking, and Kentuckian Futurity" (2025). Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers. 125.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/bfa/125
Included in
American Material Culture Commons, Appalachian Studies Commons, Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons, Fine Arts Commons, Printmaking Commons, Sculpture Commons
Artist's Statement
Sometimes, we know where we are not by charts or coordinates but by how we feel.
We use context to read our surroundings, grabbing onto landmarks like footholds. If we wind up getting lost, we find our bearings by looking for signs, symbols, or any potential clues. Shape and custom respond to and imply their origins. Place can be felt, and objects hold their own secret, local languages.
As I have moved from place to place, by chance or by intent, it has felt impossible to assert a sense of belonging. My life has been driven by a feeling of rootlessness. As a consequence, my practice focuses on the instability and recontextualization of place and material. How can I retrofit personal and political histories to make room for belonging and possibility? I draw upon regional cultural forms and materials typically relegated to craft or repair — patching, stitching, stamping, and carving. I piece components into soft sculpture with layered printed patterns. Sometimes, I tear and fray edges to counter intricate stitching, hinting at a tense cohabitation between violence and tenderness.
I am first and foremost a collector. Away from home, I cling to the scraps I bring with me: a handmade quilt, torn envelopes, half-rotten timber, and outgrown clothing. While they stay physically unchanged, my relationship to them is always in flux. I am always viewing them with changing eyes. In reality, the things in my suitcase are as alive as I am.
I have spent my life on the shaky middle grounds of race, class, gender, and location. Whether tangible objects or cultural categories, I have witnessed the rigid become pliable with the right audience. Through the mending I grew up with, I turn the identifiable into something bizarre. I make sheer leaves that sway from the ceiling, or quilts that stretch over a set table. By transmuting recognizable objects with material, I seek to make the stable a little stranger.