Commentary Excerpts

Betty Davis, The Independent Artist & Crow

Elizabeth Dawn of Memoirtistry.com

As a transplant from Washington, it’s been difficult to create meaningful connections in Pennsylvania. I’ve moved 29 times across six states and cannot relate to the many generations who’ve stayed in Pittsburgh, never to leave or left only to return. I have a restless spirit and, when tended to, it grants me unlimited access to creative flow. I am a transitory artist, however, I am not immune to homesickness; familiarity tethers me to the present. Without an anchor, it’s easy to feel lost. I seek the wonder and captivity of solitude, the healing mediums of the arts, and the kind of attention only the dead can provide; I commune with grief, a constant companion and muse.

When I learned Betty Davis is buried in Homestead Cemetery, within walking distance from where I live, I was struck by the news of her death; I didn’t realize she passed away in 2022. I discovered her music and Nasty Gal persona in early 2021, when I stumbled upon the documentary They Say I’m Different (2017).

Betty was the first black woman to write, perform, and manage herself. She was described as an enigma; her clothes expressed who she was—an extreme funkstress of jazz fusion—and like most musicians of her caliber, she influenced many. She was “Madonna before Madonna” and “Prince before Prince”, but I had never heard of Betty and wondered why. The rawness of her vocals and in-your-face expression on stage, how she owned her body and moved freely, entranced me. Uninhibited by drugs and alcohol, or by being a black woman, Betty was liberated. Her performances shocked audiences; at the time, there were no other women doing what she was doing. Betty described her music as raw, saying that “anything raw has to be pure.”

Raw is the purest form of innocence. Betty’s growling voice spoke to the rage in my belly–ancient and sacred, an eternal flame. I wonder, if I don’t speak about it, does it make it unreal? If I don’t speak about it, it doesn’t go away. This woman did what I aim to do in my work; reclaim my innocence by releasing trauma through self-expression in performance and artistry.

Betty’s arrival on the ‘70s music scene was short-lived; she was banned, boycotted, and soon, she disappeared. Her abrupt departure warranted her an “almost mythological reputation for being reclusive.” Her bandmates say she was fed up. She suffered in her liberation; being “ahead of the times” is a heavy weight. Artists are often pushed to change the very thing that makes us stand out; to dilute our voices for commercial gain, reproduce our work for easy consumption, and operate outside of our morals for fame, fans, and followers. Disingenuous markers of success. The artists who stand out to me are those who don’t give in–the ones who’ll die to their vision before selling their soul, maintaining independence while navigating the pain of freedom.

Whenever I leave the house, I step into the world as an artist. No one who asks me what I do is surprised when I say I am an artist. It’s when I’m asked “what kind of art” that shifts the conversation. The struggle is being listened to and understood. I can tell when I’m not; I am interrupted and receive unsolicited advice—told what I “should” be doing more of (marketing/social media) and what I “should” make and sell (to become successful). When I comment these things I “should” be doing directly oppose my personal values, my work is dismissed as a hobby. As if what I do have to offer is not enough.

Throughout the film, Betty makes symbolic references to Crow, which signifies the beginning of her self-awareness that she was different. Crow is the heartbeat, she says, and to me, it signifies someone under the influence of creative flow. Since she was a girl, Betty felt there was “something inside of her that had to come out”—a similar restlessness to my own. It was the women who sang the blues that connected her more deeply to Crow. “Women who sang about how they felt inside … about things that weren’t right.” Her grandmother’s wise words rang out like an alarm. “You should always know who you are and do what you have to do.” (That’s a “should” I can stand behind; the integrity to rise above, no matter what.) Betty didn’t speak from oppression, she sang knowing who she was and what she deserved.

“In the end,” Betty concluded, “I found I could only be myself. Being different is everything; it is the way forward.”

She inspired me to embrace my journey of self-discovery with boldness, which is why I’m living in PA in the first place. In May 2023, I accepted an invitation to study performance with an artist in Georgia. I was ready to develop Crow for the stage. I moved to Atlanta, but circumstances changed and my study was disrupted; no sooner had I arrived, I was on the road again, heading for Pittsburgh. Even as I wrestled with homesickness, I knew I couldn't return to WA, not yet. Where Crow beckons me to go, I follow.

Betty returned to Homestead after her father’s death and laid her music career to rest 44 years ago. Revisiting They Say I’m Different, the locations are familiar to me now. Listening to her albums while I drive these streets, the borough pulses with the energy of her legacy.

The body that housed the soul of The Queen of Funk calls me to her gravesite. Her resting place ignites a desire to ritualize my time here, however long it may be. Echoing her spirit of defiance and unapologetic self-expression, I release expectations of being understood. To honor Betty’s life, on the ninth of December, I placed the dying heads of nine cut pink roses at the headstone; I was born on a ninth, and she died on a ninth.

Three nine’s divisible by three; a calculation and request to the gods of numerology.

A kinship with Betty continues to develop across time and space. Her return to Pittsburgh signals me to consider a return of my own, to my birthplace in Anchorage, Alaska. I trust Crow, my compass that tells me when to stay and when to go. When I visit Betty, I sense I belong here; wherever I am is home. I can never be where “I am” is not.

“People tell me I paved the way,” Betty reflects in the documentary. “I’m happy about that. I’m happy my music is still alive. For a while, I flew high and strong, but the struggle to breakthrough hurt me. Everyone wanted me to be someone I wasn't.”

Being true to oneself can mean standing against the current, and some of us have the bravery to do so. Like Betty Davis, may I also refuse to compromise my creative vision. She chose independence, something difficult for artists, especially women, to have, and I choose it too.

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Windows to the World

An interview with Leia Davliakos

by Renee Dubaich

“Maybe you're in a black-and-white stage of your life and you move to a more colorful one. The ripple effect of a life that is never the same and always changing… It's grasping that, and being able to see that in art,” Leia Davliakos said when I asked if there was a time when she realized her art could affect the lives of other people.

The painting she referred to is entitled Frame of Mind, a reimagining of Monet’s The Poppy Field. A mirror-like shape captures the scene in color: the green field, the child picking red poppies, the pale sky, and the woman’s blue umbrella. While beyond the mirror’s edge, the color is starkly desaturated. It’s as if the scene is either growing or shrinking in color. A fading or expanding memory. Leia remembered when she finished the painting, she showed it to a friend who was so touched by it that she cried.

“I will never forget that moment. I never thought that something I could create could be so moving in somebody else's life,” she said.1

I discovered Leia through Offroute (offrouteart.com), an organization that supports young artists in Pittsburgh. Leia’s art is reminiscent of seasides, vibrant blues, pomegranates, and scenes of Greece—a place that deeply inspires her in all of her work. I met Leia at the closest place we could get to the Aegean Sea, the Mediterra cafe in Lawrenceville on a chilly November afternoon. The lively space was filled with conversation, clinking of mugs, brewing of the espresso machine, and the smell of freshly baked pastries. The light softly shone through the large front windows, revealing. We sipped our caffeinated drinks as she invited me into her world.

Paros Pomegranates

Leia revealed she is still trying to figure out where she fits in Pittsburgh’s art world. She experiences a constant yearning to be back in Greece and her current projects reflect this. Her most recent oil painting, These Days, is inspired by a tender image of a mother and daughter from the MITOS PROJECT.* While painting this piece, Leia thought of Kastellorizo, the island where her family is from. In painting, Leia brings the places she loves right to her and holds them close, even when she’s thousands of miles away.

As our conversation came to an end, Leia reminisced on her journey as an artist; of how it began when she was very young and would draw alongside her dad, watching intently as he drew each line, and then recreating them on her own paper. Flash forward to where she is now, still using those techniques and never doubting that creating art was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. She said she finds meaning in every little step along the journey—even when there are times she may be unsuccessful, it’s taking that step that counts.

Thank you Leia for inviting me into your world, and sharing your world with others through art.

You can view Leia’s work at www.leiadavliakos.com.

* A photographic and ethnographic project on Greek costumes (pappasmichael.com/mitos/)

Leia’s artwork ranges from oil to encaustic, watercolor, drawing, and photography. All of her works are connected by the theme “Windows to the World.” She explained her fascination with windows, arches, lenses, or anything that creates a space for art to be seen through. They are thresholds, separating and connecting one side to the other—the individual to the world, the individual to the art.

“It’s like a transition to something beyond. How do you grasp what’s beyond by seeing it through a lens like a window? Or an eye? Because everyone can see something different,” she said.

Windows find their way into all of Leia’s works, whether in metaphor as shown in Frame of Mind or the use of an actual window as in Eye of the Beholder, where Leia incorporates a six-pane window she found at an antique store. A Greek city at sunset is deconstructed across each of the panes, rendering the image in different forms such as mosaic, oil, acrylic, and photo collage. The horizon shifts from impression to detail like a memory coming into focus, or representing the boundless ways that memory can take shape.

Leia’s art is like her scrapbook, inspired by the people she’s met, places she’s been, and an ode to Hellenic memory. Paros Pomegranates, an oil painting created last summer at an art residency on the Greek island Paros, reflects this notion. The pomegranates resonate with fond memories of her mother and grandmother. While growing up, she recalled the fruit always being in the house, a highly regarded cure-all and symbol of healing in Greek culture. The painting and her time at the residency marked a pivotal moment for her as an artist. It was the first time she had her art shown in an exhibition (at ArtNumber23 gallery in Athens) and it was a transition from considering her art only as a hobby to a more deep-rooted passion and consistent practice.

Leia Davliakos and These Days

From the outside looking in, at the Carnegie Museum of Art, a series of tall white banners makes an emphatic call for the transformation of the museum as we know it. Andrea Geyer’s Manifest is displayed in the museum’s glass entryway, visible to both the outdoor sculpture court and the wide interior entrance. On the banners, Geyer lists her wants, her needs, and her demands of what a museum should be, and in doing so, calls attention to what it often is not. It’s a call for action that is as plain and bold as its display. No frills, no room for (mis)interpretation, no chance to miss it. I contemplate (and support) Geyer's vision before my visit, while I am at the museum, and in the days following, as I struggle to shape and manifest my response to it into a cohesive written work. Do I call into question whether the Carnegie Museum of Art is honoring Geyer's call for transformation? Do I critique the display as merely performative? Do I offer a hopeful vision of what could be, joining my voice with Geyer's to move our legacy art institutions into the future?

I Need A Museum

Lauren M Salopek

And then the world shifts, and I realize: whether CMoA is doing enough to respond to Manifest is not the question. The question is wider, deeper, with a bigger breadth than that.

The CMoA's website tells us that Manifest arose out of Geyer's research into Grace McCann Morley, founding director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1935 to 1958.) Morley's vision for the museum, which still feels progressive 70 years later, included a public art library, a television program called Art in Your Life, and operating hours until 10:00 PM. But another influence on Manifest came in 2016, when the results of the US presidential election pushed Geyer to include calls for museums "to be sites of sanctuary and resistance."

As I revise this writing in early November of 2024, so too does another presidential election influence the context surrounding Manifest.

I stop struggling with questions of how to properly critique the Carnegie Museum of Art's engagement with Manifest, and whether the vision of its own future is in harmony with Geyer's words. I struggle instead with any vision of the future at all.

I start doom scrolling on social media because it's somehow comforting to know we're all in discomfort together. I start seeing people and organizations – mostly artists and art spaces – offering open doors: free admission to normally-paid events, Invitations to simply come and be together, to mourn, to distract, to laugh, to plan. I see plans for rest, mutual aid, and organized resistance. I see the word "community" pop up more times in a day than I've seen it in months combined. I see a movement that is tangible and not performative. I see a mass understanding of what is needed in this moment, and a rise to an unspoken bid for action, however small that action may be. I see what Geyer is calling for in Manifest happening in real-time, and I stop grappling with questions of whether or not the Carnegie Museum is responding properly to her work, because at this moment, that question doesn't matter: we already are responding, elsewhere, outside the museum walls.

As I revise this writing in early November of 2024, so too does another presidential election influence the context surrounding Manifest.

All of this has shifted my view on Manifest, and the context of what the museum could be. I think that Geyer's museum exists, or is in the process of coming into existence, right now – but it's not in our legacy institutions. It's in the little art gallery with the rickety stairs leading up to it. It's in the tattoo shops with the progress pride flag in the windows and the familial atmosphere inside. It's in the community gardens, the oddity shops, and the tiny rundown music venues. And what a beautifully appropriate manifestation of what Geyer envisions in her work this is. What she's asking for is progressive and wide-ranging. It's bold and varied, with demands for places of peace and places of disruption, a space for abstract dreaming, and a space for concrete action. The text of Manifest is vast enough in its demands that no two museums displaying the work offer the same collection of words. Every creative space can offer the demands of Geyer’s, but no two places will do it in the same way. In one place you might be organizing politically, while in another you may be giving yourself and your community space to create and unwind from the rising tension. And in a third space, you might find art that blends the two together.

Manifest is a tall order. It's a bold demand and a big dream to ask of any entity, and I applaud Andrea Geyer for doing it, especially because it directly confronts large arts institutions that are often too entrenched in their ways, and the business of it all to fully respond in the way she implores them to. It's not that I think museums, in this case the Carnegie Museum of Art, can't meet Geyer's demands. It's just that it's simply not up to me to decide. It's up to the CMoA, and any museum that displays Manifest on its walls, to decide if they will take the project's words to heart. Until they do, and even if they don't, I still see Geyer's words becoming a tangible reality around me. Small, independent artists and art spaces are doing important work, work that soothes our souls and liberates ourselves amidst political adversity. With the words of Manifest hanging in their windows, the Carnegie Museum of Art has an open invitation to join us. I want them to join us. I need them to join us. I demand that they join us. Because it is going to take all of us to ensure that the kind of space Geyer imagines can come into existence, and then continue to exist. It is going to take all of us to manifest it.

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