Thursday, February 17, 2011

Carletta Joy Walker- Artist Profile

Carletta Joy Walker


Text and Photography By: J. Wesley Beeks





We celebrate the diversity of the Boricua College staff with a profile on Carletta Joy Walker an artist, creator, intellectual moderator , poet, and surveyor of cultural, experiential, and theoretical studies. Graciously sharing her artistic installations the Boricua College community was invited to take an elaborate journey inside her visual perspectives of the world at large.


What is your position at Boricua College? What makes Boricua College unique from other institutions of higher learning?

My “position” is one of seer, contributing to illuminating and honoring the mission of Boricua College and its founders. I work in the Manhattan Library and maintain the Instructional Modules Library.



How do you see library science changing with technology and electronic media?

I see Library Science in the role of facilitating order in this vast new expanse of information made available as a result of technology. Also, integrating and co-relating the cataloguing systems made for maintaining order in physical buildings and spaces to the evolving types of electronic publications existing in virtual realities.



How did you develop your artistic perspective?

It is more that my artistic perspective developed me: an acute awareness of the elements comprising my internal and external sight and sense wanting expression.



Did you incorporate the Taxonomy of Bloom in the creation of your art and the placement of it in the gallery?

No, not in a conscious way since my art existed and started being expressed long before I had an intellectual awareness of the Bloom Taxonomy

You work is being featured at the Gallery in the school can you describe the elements in your art work and it was received by the students and faculty.

The physical elements are paper, leads, fabric, oil pastel, paint, ink, wood, canvas, computer, thread, glue and then there are things used which help create the art but are not seen in the finished piece, i.e. scissors or a brush. The elements of sight, sound, touch, taste, smell and sense are in my art work. The work often, perhaps most often begins, is initiated by a feeling in concert with—with a sight, a sound, a sense of something wanting expression. The art is a manifestation, perhaps sometimes a translation of a feeling or a vision.

The reception: what I saw was engagement with the “elements” and their composition that made them my particular artistic expression and engagement with the tone, spirit and informational substance--form and content engagement. It was very moving seeing, hearing and feeling the various responses.



Name three individuals in that have inspired you from their works in Black History and how contemporary society can learn from them.

Fredrick Douglas, Fannie Lou Hammer, Aesop with directness, simplicity, nuance, spirit illumination in concert with action.



Name three individuals that have impacted Hispanic History.

Arturo Schomberg, Frieda Kahlo, Pedro Pietri with directness, simplicity, nuance spirit illumination in concert with action.



What is the correlation between art, technology, and education?

Art manifests inside technology and education; in it most beautiful functioning technology and education are art forms. Art thinking facilitates the learning of the various disciplines contained in Education and Technology.



What role does the Arts play in the continuity of community and global development?

Art is elixir, art carries cultural story that contributes to words written and not written. Art unites, creates individuality and community. Art helps heal microscopic splits and wounds as well as macroscopic explosions and devastations.



What are some of the elements you incorporate in your art.?

Animals, orbs, bikes, cars, beings, geometric shapes, motion, color, spirit, story…



Would you describe your artistic style as unorthodox?

In the creative atmosphere very little is unorthodox. There is balance, harmony, color and tone sensibility form evolved out of creative soup content: content being shaped by material substance… iAmArtIsTheUnity.



What are some of the advantages a graduate of Boricua College may have over traditional academic systems?

Boricua College graduates have been encouraged to value their thought in relationship to existing bodies of knowledge and information. The educational method encourages and supports thorough intellectual understanding in the context of a necessary and evolved cultural, physical, spiritual mores. This is a tremendous asset because Boricua College endeavors to graduate whole/humanistic human beings.



Who are three artist that we should know of and their relevance.

I’m not big on “shoulds”… my thinking about artists to know, hmm. Know oneself, ones own art expression, which, in my way of thinking will open one to the unity of the art one is in the midst of. Next, look at the different art that arises from and is integrated into the cultures of different geographical areas and historical periods, learn the named and unnamed artists.





When did you know that you were an artist?

I fully claimed being an artist when it felt safe, when I was able to separate being that from some of the prevailing baggage like poverty and insanity.









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