Red-Crown Crane
Clarissa Sligh
Asheville, North Carolina
Red-Crown Crane, 2007
Digital photography
When asked to create an artwork that would incorporate, respond to, or transform white supremacist books, I felt that it was an invitation that I, as an African American artist, could not turn down.
Struggling to deal with seeing and handling the books, a memory came to me of having seen thousands of origami cranes while visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Japan. Origami cranes had become symbols of peace.
I learned to turn the pages of the books into origami cranes. My fingers were stiff and clumsy. My folds were irregular, imprecise, but I continued folding.
Bio
When Clarissa Thompson Sligh was 15 years old, she became the lead plaintiff in the 1955 school desegregation case in Virginia (Clarissa Thompson et. al. v. Arlington County School Board). From that moment forward, her work as a student and as a professional –first in math/science working for NASA, later in business, and finally, in the arts –has taken into account change, transformation, and complication: themes that related to her experiences fostering social justice. Sligh was born in Washington, D.C., raised in Arlington, Virginia, and was a faculty member at New York University and the University of Pennsylvania. She currently lives and works in Asheville, North Carolina.