ABSTRACT
During an interview I conducted with the noted African American artist John Outterbridge, I noticed that John, in recalling his childhood in North Carolina, accompanied his vivid recollections of his mother making soap with a flurry of alternately subdued and expansive mime movements. As he spoke, his fingers paced out the dimensions of the kitchen and porch where she worked, carefully locating the stove, the counters where she placed her vats, and the storage area where she put the long, freshly prepared slats of soap to cool before cutting them into bars. For a few seconds, his fingers traced her steps in the old house where they had lived, then they merged back into his upper torso as his arms and shoulders expanded to imitate his mother’s body going from task to task in a long and arduous process. The gestures became even broader as he described the smells and the emotions they stirred within him. A counterpoint emerged. His words centered on himself, once again in his mind’s eye, a small boy watching, occasionally lending a hand when asked, but his body continued to recall the diligent craft of his mother. Intermittently, he evoked the aromatic experience with deep inhalations that relocated the boy into the body of a 57-year-old man. Words flowed as one part of a complex dance, another expression of which was a series of elegant, translucent sculptures inspired by the same memories.3
