Between Worlds
Bill Traylor was born a slave in Alabama in 1853 and died in 1949. He lived long enough to see the United States of America go through many social and political changes. He was an eyewitness to the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation and the Great Migration. As a self taught visual artist, his work reflects two separate worlds— rural and urban, black and white, old and new. In many ways the simplified forms in Traylor’s artwork tell of the complexity of his world, creativity, and inspiring bid for self-definition in a dehumanizing segregated culture. This piece is inspired by the evocative nature as a whole and not one piece by Traylor. Themes of mystical folklore, race, and religion pervade Traylor’s work. I imagine these solo pieces as a musical study; hopefully showing Traylor’s life between disparate worlds.
Text related to Bill Traylor and the project title "Between Worlds" are borrowed from, and organized in relation to, Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor, by Leslie Umberger for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, (book and exhibition), 2018: https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/traylor.
Between Worlds
4 minutes
for solo violin or solo cello or solo double bass
Bill Traylor was born a slave in Alabama in 1853 and died in 1949. He lived long enough to see the United States of America go through many social and political changes. He was an eyewitness to the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation and the Great Migration. As a self taught visual artist, his work reflects two separate worlds— rural and urban, black and white, old and new. In many ways the simplified forms in Traylor’s artwork tell of the complexity of his world, creativity, and inspiring bid for self-definition in a dehumanizing segregated culture. This piece is inspired by the evocative nature as a whole and not one piece by Traylor. Themes of mystical folklore, race, and religion pervade Traylor’s work. I imagine these solo pieces as a musical study; hopefully showing Traylor’s life between disparate worlds.
Text related to Bill Traylor and the project title "Between Worlds" are borrowed from, and organized in relation to, Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor, by Leslie Umberger for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, (book and exhibition), 2018: https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/traylor.