Beauty Shop Aria

‘Beauty Shop Opera’ Spring 2020. Mixed-mediums, acrylic paints, opaque inks, latex gloss enamel, hand-cut and digitally created collage elements, epoxy resin on birch panel. 48”w x 84”h x 1.5”d.

‘Beauty Shop Aria’ is a large-scale mixed-media work depicting the intimate interaction between hairstylist and client within the interior of a black haircare salon, presenting a glimpse into the cultural identity and vitality these spaces represent within the African American community.

In the foreground of the image a young woman draped in a patterned salon cape is seated in a seafoam green salon chair with her back to the viewer. The hair stylist is prominently positioned in the middle ground of the picture plane. Her towering figure spans nearly the entire length of the artwork from top to bottom, casually stylish in a pink camouflage patterned top with ‘GAP’ embroidered on the front, and light pink jeans with a white Gucci belt.

She wears her own hair in a natural style as she slowly turns the chair to inspect the fresh braids that she has spent hours twisting into place. The stylist is captured in the moment she glances through her designer glasses; pausing as if another client has just entered the salon, or someone has called her name from across the room.

The salon interior is organized over a background of horizontal planes with shifting perspectives, contrasting textures, and varied media techniques.

Study the partial view of the shop’s hand-painted window signage reflected in the upper right portion of the scene. The pastel aqua, painted with an acrylic matte finish, contrasts against the glossy gold lettering; allowing outdoor light into the room, while providing a cool balance to the warmer tones found throughout the rest of the scene. Juxtaposed in the upper left portion, glittery gold wallpaper with geometric designs decorate the walls.  

Images of vintage and contemporary black hair care products collected from advertising and online sources are collaged over a black and gold silk tapestry covering the stylist’s workstation, creating a patchwork of colors and dense visual texture across the middle of the picture plane.

Beneath the stylist’s workstation the checkerboard floor of linoleum tiles, in contrasting gold and bronze squares, transitions the viewer’s gaze towards the lower portion of the artwork which depicts a rubber floor mat covered with a carpet of roses strewn about the base of the salon chair at the feet of the image’s central figure.

The ‘918’ area code mirrored in the window signage is a visual clue that establishes the salon’s location in the historic Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1921, Tulsa was home to one of the most prosperous African-American communities in the country. During a period of strictly-enforced racial segregation in Oklahoma, hundreds of businesses built, owned and operated by Black entrepreneurs flourished along Greenwood Avenue, dubbed “Black Wall Street by the noted educator Booker T. Washington.

In a little over a decade, from 1910 to 1920, the community had built banks, libraries, grocery stores, pawn shops, jewelry stores, 21 churches, 21 restaurants and two movie theaters. In all, the area was made up of about nearly 200 businesses taking up 36 blocks, with a population of around 10,000.

Mabel Little was one of the many Black people drawn to the thriving and close-knit Greenwood community. She arrived in Tulsa having left her hometown of Boley, Oklahoma with a dollar and change in her pocket. For the first few years in Tulsa, Mabel cleaned hotel rooms and diligently saved her money. By 1915, she started washing, straightening and waving hair, a skill she learned from her aunt. Soon, “The Little Rose Beauty Salon” was filled with customers from the community.

All the young ladies who worked as domestics in White homes during the week, looked forward to Thursdays and “Maid’s Night Out'‘ when they would stop by The Little Rose Beauty Salon to get their hair done, bring out their newest outfit, and stroll with girlfriends or dates among the bright lights and teeming energy along Greenwood Avenue

Over Memorial Day weekend in 1921, Mabel Little lost her beloved beauty parlor, her husband’s restaurant next door, as well as some rental property they owned during what has been called "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history." when mobs of white Tulsa residents attacked black residents and destroyed businesses, churches and homes in the Greenwood District.

‘Beauty Shop Aria’ is the artist’s homage to the spirit of women like Mabel Little, as well as recognition of the countless and forgotten Black entrepreneurs of Greenwood and Black Wall Street who lived the theme of the American Dream against great opposition and oppression; only to lose it all as casualties amid the strife of America’s tortured racial history.

‘Beauty Shop Aria’ weaves together African-American visual motifs, the political and economic dynamics of Black hair, the culture of the Black beauty shop and its pivotal role as a safe space for Black identity and self-expression, in order to examine the evidence of loss and triumph, to collect the residue of memory, and to explore historical correctives in the present. 

‘Beauty Shop Aria’ is a visual dialogue in mixed-media that hints at the tragic, the transcendent, the beautiful and the possible, with a life-affirming vitality as uplifting as a fresh hair do.