Praeterita

A few months ago, I wrote about a project by a friend of mine, artist Deborah Doering, who was starting a collaboration with the Keiskamma artists in South Africa . These artists, mainly women, started making art several years ago in order to raise money for an AIDS clinic in Hamburg, which is in a valley right on the Indian Ocean between Port Elizabeth and East London. Deborah has just returned from a 15 day trip to begin the project. She was accompanied by Dr. Grace Carreon, shown in the following photos of the clinic: After making a presentation to the lead artists in the community (there are about 150 artists there altogether), Deborah then began collaborating with the local artists on making a series of paintings that combine Deborah's abstract symbology with patterns that occur in their work: There are paintings on the ceiling because as they worked, they began to see the resemblance between Deborah's forms and night constellations. After working for a few days together...

I attended quite a special event on Thursday night, in a striking venue. Artist Deborah Doering (pictured above, right) held a fundraising party/installation on the 84th floor of the Sears Tower, the monolithic quarter-mile high skyscraper that dominates the skyline of downtown Chicago. The event was to publicise and benefit a collaboration that she is initiating with a group of women artists in South Africa. These South African women, many of whose families are affected by AIDS, made these large tapestries which in the past few years have been purchased and exhibited all over the world. The Keiskamma Altarpiece, a tapestry based on the Isenheim altarpiece This group of women from the Keiskamma Valley have agreed to collaborate with Deborah by turning sketches and paintings created by Deborah into tapestries. The aim is eventually to install the finished tapestries in 100 public institutions across the globe. It's an amibitious project, but Deborah is already being helped b...