There are lavishly illustrated books about art. Then, there are books that are art. This month, Arts Beat enters the multileveled worlds of Sybil Archibald and Ann Vollum, two remarkable South Orange-based visual artists. Sybil also works out of East Orange’s Manufacturers Village. (See events below). Right now, both have books and art on their minds: Sybil’s eagerly awaited “The Inner Life of the Artist, 900 Monotypes in 900 Days” is just published and enjoying avid sales and rapturous comments. A contemporary fabric artist and bookbinder with many limited-edition, visuals-only books, Ann’s “Octopussy” is an unconventional show-stopper at the current exhibit Booked 18 — See/ing at Madison’s Museum of Early Trade and Crafts. Ann has been a mainstay of Books Art Roundtables exhibits nearly since their inception at the Pierro Gallery in South Orange.
The two women know each other, admire each other’s work and frequently show in the same, invitation-only exhibits. There are intriguing parallels in their back stories and, not to push it too far, some parallels in their vision. The more you look and the more you know, the more you see the deepening levels of autobiography informing their work. Both plumb the unconscious and have a language of both traditional and personal symbolism. Sybil explores the mystical and the universal. Ann juxtaposes organic materials with the fantastic and the surreal. She flirts with sly horror. Their art has a strong narrative component. So, let this reading adventure begin.
Chapter One: Backstories
Sybil Archibald began life in the 20-acre family orange grove in Ojai, California. Habitually outdoors playing in mud, she came to sense the mud palpitating with life and the connectedness of all things. Wrenched at an early age from these rural roots into the cacophony of city life in a Los Angeles apartment, life would throw her a more wrenching uprooting in adulthood.
Ann Vollum’s parents were British expats, her father working for the multinational Eastman Kodak Corporation. Born in 1963 in then-colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), she lived her first 11 years in a newly independent Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia) that was both fascinating and frightening to an imaginative child.
“There were murders,” Ann said. “Watchmen would hover in the shadows outside our windows.”
There was also a charging elephant, rabid dogs, and poisonous snakes making their way into her elementary school. As her schooling progressed, she became one of the few remaining Brits in her school. The family departed Zambia for Pakistan. Ann and her siblings were farmed out to harsh English boarding schools with draconian regulations.
Both artists’ parents looked askance at the life of the artist. Art school was taken off their tables. “My mother called art and textile design ‘sloppy options,’” Ann said. That’s Brit speak for worthless. Ann’s parents decided architecture was acceptable—just barely—as a field for her to study at the University of Newcastle where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies. She then earned a Diploma in Graphic Origination and Reproduction from the London School of Printing. Not allowed to attend art school, Sybil went to New York University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Medieval Spirituality. She plunged into multicultural sacred arts, especially Russian icon painting, at Manhattan’s School of Sacred Arts.
Chapter Two: Becoming Artists
When the creative vision inhabits a person, it finds its way. Parental control ends. By 1989, both Sybil and Ann were in New York City and following their paths. Sybil worked in many mediums. Her earlier figurative clay sculptures resound with both the life of the mud she played in years before and spiritual and emotional power. I especially see medieval European expressionism in her pieces. Ann would transmogrify Africa and traditional African tribal designs into her inked “Beastly, Beasties,” wildly patterned primordial creatures from an internal Vollum alternate universe. She made and published limited-edition books, including “In the Belly of the Beast,” a standout in an early BOOKED Arts Exhibit.
Each woman understands her art, in part, as a processing of her childhood. Each has a mission to release art into the world and, upon release, let those experiencing their art bring their own interpretations and meaning to it. And, each artist found themselves making a new art work daily for three years. That brings us to their current work.
Chapter Three: Sybil Archibald
“A Monotype of the Day” & “The Inner Life of the Artist, 900 Monotypes in 900 Days”
Twenty-five years ago, Sybil’s connective tissue inexorably hardened. Diagnosed with scleroderma, a rare autoimmune disease, the artist could no longer extend her hands. A vibrant woman in her twenties became bedridden, with at best five years to live. Out of those dark days came the monotype of the day project and ultimately the creation of the exquisite The Inner Life of the Artist, 900 Monotypes in 900 Days (hardcover, 10” by 12”) which lovingly chronicles Sybil’s art, meditations, and poems by beloved poets, some well-known — Rilke, Oliver, others lesser known.
At the outset, her monotypes were in grey tones pierced by blood red shout-outs. “I was sicker then and both physically and emotionally in turmoil,” Sybil said. Her early imagery echoed these physical and emotional states: entrapment, bodies and souls being torn asunder. “As I immersed myself in the making of the art, I began to heal,” Sybil said. No, not a cinematic miracle cure, but a release from emotional pain and a self-acceptance of her journey and her role as the artist, the interpreter—the one who receives the Word from the Artist, the Divine Spiritual Force, and sends it out into the world.
This release and this mission can best be understood in the art itself. Sybil and I talked about one of the later monotypes, “Day 883, floating,” (pictured above). In evocative indigo, blues and violet, “floating” is set when day turns to night, when the physical world recedes into the gloam, and the spiritual world is revealed. The figurative components — the boat, the transforming figure, the inverted figure, the outstretched, pierced hand and the moon all evoke both a universal and personal iconography.
“The boat is the self, emptying out to fill with the creative energy it can send into the world,” Sybil said. “It floats on an ocean of Divine Love,” Sybil continued, citing mystical Sufi poetry. “The inverted figure is the emptied-out self, ready to create. The hand is the hand receiving the stigmata, an opening in the flesh that allows light in,” Sybil said. “I have severe disability, but what is hardest in life are the losses, betrayals, our own mistakes…When I am in the process of creating, my physical pain recedes.”
Sybil’s works have traveled the world. Here at home, she is revered and beloved by a large community of artists. (She tirelessly informs her fellow SOMA artists of open calls, upcoming shows, and more.) “The Inner Life of the Artist” has been a long labor of love and a gift to all who seek a window into both the soul of an extraordinary woman and a window into larger truths.
Chapter Four: Ann Vollum
Octopussy, Eco Sculptures, and Allegories
Ann Vollum is a stealth artist. She first draws you in with her extraordinary imagination and technical mastery. Then you find yourself in, well, the belly of one of her “beasties,” piercing out meanings as surface beauty, delight, and seeming innocence transmogrify into the macabre.
Ann found her initial vision doing three years of daily pen and ink drawings — largely of her Beastly, Beasties — executed while at one of her children’s soccer practices. She embraced Edward Gorey (1925-2000) and outsider artist Henry Darger (1892-1973) as her artistic godfathers. “I was working through all the traumas of my childhood,” Ann said. “While delving into my voice.”
Let’s start with her “Octopussy” (Ann did see the 1983 James Bond film. She didn’t read the 1966 Ian Fleming book), an intriguing, foldable merino wool sculptural book on exhibit now through the end of March at the new home of the Book Arts Roundtable at the aforementioned Museum of Early American Trade and Crafts. If Ann’s initial pieces were wordless books of the Beastly, Beasties, here she explodes all conventional expectations. She explains: “‘Octopussy’ opens and closes like a book and can be viewed in many configurations. Think of each component part as pages of a book without words that engages the imagination,” Ann said.
Ann’s mythical creatures are created in narrative sets of three. That creation involves a long, complicated series of challenging processes only surpassed in complexity by that of her shield-like eco sculptures that evoke the art of her childhood Africa and much more. (View these on Ann’s website.)
I drilled down with Ann on her Allegories which with dark humor both celebrate artistic imagination and skewer notions of childhood innocence. In “Girls Know Best” 2023 (pictured here) what is the little girl in her early 20th Century frock and braids saying to the two miniature nude figures inside one of Ann’s “Never-Smile-At-A-Crocodile” Beasties”? Is she admonishing the creatures or teasing those within or just curious but detached? Or what? As with her sculptures, these are highly labor-intensive pieces, involving weeks of handwork.
Ann seeks out old linens, dyes the fabric with natural dyes made from, say, onion skins, creating the images or transferring them from old picture books, and marshals ink, acrylic paint, appliqué and embroidery — not to mention first pummeling sage leaves into the fabric to create a palimpsest of organic shapes. “I entered my recent ESKFF (Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation) Residency with their expectation I would make 10 museum-quality pieces during the three months,” Ann said. Ann did a great deal of preparatory work, but each piece takes long weeks. Reproductions of Ann’s works flatten in photographs. Seek out her actual works. Some will be on view soon at an upcoming show at the Ivy Brown Gallery at the Watermark in Brooklyn Heights.
Always seeking, always evolving, Sybil and Ann’s works transfix, mystify, and enlighten. They demand the suspension of the everyday and the absolute. As with a good book, there is space for personal interpretation, ambiguity and discussion. See below for ways to continue the conversation and watch for a future Arts Beat Artist Roundtable, which will include Sybil and Ann.
Learn More and Where to See:
Learn more about Sybil Archibald and her work, including videos of her at work at her website. As implied by the name, monotypes are one of a kind. Sybil’s “floating” is sold, but many of the monotypes are available. “The Inner Life” has high-quality reproductions.
Day 122,” the message” and Day 124 “the artist approaches” are currently on view at Studio Montclair’s main exhibition, Black and White Imprint at 127 Bloomfield Ave, Montclair. Open Thursdays-Sundays, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. and by appointment.
Sybil will open her East Orange Manufacturer Village studio during the Spring Open House, Sat. April 20 & Sun. April 21 noon to 6 p.m. each day. Go to Building 3, Studio 1B.
Learn more about Ann Vollum at her website.
“Octopussy” is at the Museum of Early American Trade and Craft, 9 Main Street, Madison, (973) 377-2982. Learn more of the exhibit and the Book Art Round Table here.
Ann Vollum works will be on exhibit at Ivy Brown Gallery at the Watermark in Brooklyn Heights. Call (212) 925-1111 for appointments and information.
