Fannta Drummer joined Life Blood Exhibit with the Gallery Visio show. Here is her piece, Parvati, which can currently be seen in the show at Black Door Gallery in Cape Girardeau. Smaller prints of the piece are also available.
You can learn more about Fanta Drummer on her website here.
Artist's Statement:
Women from all over the world adorn their bodies in one fashion or another. In my image, I wanted to draw attention to different forms of beauty. The physical markings on Parvati’s body symbolize beauty marks and her regal, black skin represents the power of melanin.
Parvati is definitely a celebratory piece. She not only celebrates the strength of Nubian women, but she also celebrates wealth through tradition. Unfortunately, in our society black women are not viewed as objects of beauty, but more so as sex objects. This perspective, which began during slavery, is still prevalent today. It is important that audiences digest positive representations of black women in order to counteract the negative ones circulating in Western art and the media.
I took a fine point, black Sharpie and sketched the image. My goal was to provide enough detail so that the viewer could discern that the figure was a woman. Then, I scanned the sketch into Adobe Photoshop and used the program to reverse the colors. The black lines became white lines and the white background became black. Next, I added color to the beads to draw attention to the top of the image and to guide the eye from top to bottom.
