December 14, 2006
Anonymity
Read an obituary this week, of a very successful African-American quilter who lived in Richmond, CA and died at age 70. Her life story is an interesting one, worth a click on the link. Her name was Effie Mae Howard, but she exhibited and sold her quilts under a pseudonym, Rosie Lee Tompkins. Her work was highly regarded, exhibited, and her quilts reportedly sold for thousands of dollars, so she was certainly a successful artist in that sense. But what really intrigued me about this woman was the idea that she was also successful in keeping her private life completely hidden and separate from her professional life/artist personae. Apparently she was so successful that for 26 years only a very few people outside of her immediate family knew that Ms Howard was also Ms Tompkins.
Successfully maintaining anonymity as a successful artist while exhibiting and selling to the public in 2006 strikes me as nothing short of amazing.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about anonymity and its implications and feasibility. It strikes me that the overwhelming trends and forces in our lives today run in the other direction, from the lure of the cult of celebrity to the vast databases, both publicly available and private, that track so many aspects of our lives. Technological innovations which we've embraced such as credit cards, cell phones, TiVo, the internet and email, onstar and loyalty cards leave trails about who we are, who we know, what we like, where we go, and what we do with our lives. Whether we want to or not, whether we realize it or not, we leave our digital footprints, embedded with all kinds of information about us, along paths that are easily traced by anyone motivated enough to learn a few tricks and then follow them.
So it seems incredible to me that Ms Howard could successfully achieve and maintain anonymity as a commercially successful artist in today's world. I understand that her success was due in large part to a good friend who was both trustworthy and well-connected in the art quilt world, a man who worked hard from what I've read, to make her successes possible on her terms. My hat is off to both of them for their fete. And the quilts are beautiful, you can see 5 of them here. ¶ 9:23 AM
Successfully maintaining anonymity as a successful artist while exhibiting and selling to the public in 2006 strikes me as nothing short of amazing.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about anonymity and its implications and feasibility. It strikes me that the overwhelming trends and forces in our lives today run in the other direction, from the lure of the cult of celebrity to the vast databases, both publicly available and private, that track so many aspects of our lives. Technological innovations which we've embraced such as credit cards, cell phones, TiVo, the internet and email, onstar and loyalty cards leave trails about who we are, who we know, what we like, where we go, and what we do with our lives. Whether we want to or not, whether we realize it or not, we leave our digital footprints, embedded with all kinds of information about us, along paths that are easily traced by anyone motivated enough to learn a few tricks and then follow them.
So it seems incredible to me that Ms Howard could successfully achieve and maintain anonymity as a commercially successful artist in today's world. I understand that her success was due in large part to a good friend who was both trustworthy and well-connected in the art quilt world, a man who worked hard from what I've read, to make her successes possible on her terms. My hat is off to both of them for their fete. And the quilts are beautiful, you can see 5 of them here. ¶ 9:23 AM
