Sydney G. James

Detroit-bred and based Interdisciplinary Artist and 2017 Kresge Fellow Sydney G. James earned her BFA at the College for Creative Studies in 2001 and began her career as an Art Director in advertising. Sydney headed to Los Angeles in 2004, to expand her career as a visual artist in the film and television industry and earned her master’s degree in secondary education. Returning to Detroit in 2011, Sydney has become one of the leading creative voices in southeast Michigan. Primarily known for large murals, Sydney’s work explores themes of the racial and gender positioning of the black woman in America as “last” or “least among others” in society. Her portraits and murals seek to reposition this narrative of the black woman’s visibility and importance bringing them to the forefront of the conversation.

Sydney is a co-founder of the biannual BLKOUT Walls street mural festival which debuted in Detroit in 2021. Sydney's artwork is featured by major marketing brands looking for authentic cultural connection. Brands include: Vans shoes, PepsiCo, Ford Motor Company, Detroit Pistons, Detroit Lions, as well as being one of the faces of the Lip Bar brand of cosmetics.

About her 2023 mural, Sydney writes:

When I was first invited to paint for Chroma Zone, I was a bit stuck on what/who to paint as I had never been to St. Paul and my only knowledge leaned more towards Prince, and everyone and everything having to do with Prince. But I wanted to challenge myself because this was Saint Paul, and not Minneapolis. I knew I wanted to paint a child. But what child and why?

I spoke with my friend Birdcap (@birdcap) who told me that his Mom was born here. She had passed a few years back, and I saw and felt his pain close up. So I liked the idea of honoring her. Our friendship has changed my life, and so I also wanted to pay homage to Birdcap and his craft. He's a man born and raised in Mississippi by the bayous and that was his refuge. The water. He took a dive in the pouring rain to soothe his pain.

Throughout history the element of water has been associated with a rich symbolism. In its many forms, dew, rain, seas, oceans, rivers, lakes, ponds, ice etc. – it is an archetypal symbol for birth, death, and creativity. It is the formless, containing potential form and possibilities. It is the realm of dreams and the astral, the home of emotions, intuition, and inspiration. Water is an ancient and universal symbol of purity, fertility and the source of life. In many cosmologies life arose from primordial waters. In a general sense, water is an emblem of all fluidity in the material world and of dissolution, mingling, cohesion, birth and re-generation. Water can be a metaphor for spiritual nourishment and salvation.

Water is also sacred to the Dakota and Ojibwe tribes of Minnesota. In my search, I came across the artist George Morrison (September 30, 1919 – April 17, 2000) whose Ojibwe/Chippewa name is Wah Wah Teh Go Nay Ga Bo. His work is a perfect blend of giving honor to our ancestors, our new lives, paying tribute, and acknowledging that our natural element, water, holds us all together in a literal and spiritual sense. A painter and sculptor from Minnesota most known for his place in the Abstract Expressionists movement, he piqued my interest. So I gazed through his beautiful paintings online and “Lake Superior Landscape, 1981" (in the collection of Mia) was the one that connected all of the dots for my simple composition.

A young Dakota child staring off into a dreamy gaze, wearing a t-shirt bearing her favorite street artist Birdcap's painting honoring his mother. Her shadow emulates a small section of George Morrison’s modernist landscape painting reminding us that after birth, times of grief, triumphant moments and moments of defeat or just day to day maintenance, water is essential. Sometimes Water Keeps us Grounded.

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