Andrew I. Wilson

Care is a tool of trans-dimensional travel. It looks like the fabrics my grandmother stashed under her bed after she was evicted from San Francisco. It is the difference between the handmade and the mass produced. My work, is a meditation on slow craft and how this slowness collects, amplifies and transports the viewer through care. It is the way I peer into the archive and interrogate the histories that shape the fabric of Blackness.

I’ve been contemplating utilitarian objects and the edge of their utility – whether they be ritual or household (I guess, in a sense, they are one-in-the-same). In searching for this edge, I find myself thinking about how these objects become ways to amplify the spirit particles ingrained into their structure through human contact – like a hat, quilt or door. Once collected and amplified, these particles can be used to move across dimensions – much like the way a quilt from a loved one connects the user and maker outside of time. In essence, I am hoping to make objects that are filled with care and honor all of those who have come before and those who will come after.

Wilson received his BFA from Ohio Wesleyan University in 2013 with a concentration in Jewelry/Metals and his MFA from the University of California, Berkeley in 2017. Wilson’s work has been in many galleries and institutions including: The Berkeley Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SOMArts, and the Museum of the African Diaspora. He has received such awards and honors as: the Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Award, an Emergency Grant from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, the Carr Center Independent Scholars
Fellowship, the McColl Center and more.

He has also worked with Carrie Mae Weems on The Spirit that Resides in Havana, Cuba alongside the Havana Biennial and The Future is Now Parade for the opening of The REACH in Washington D.C.

His work has been collected by Michigan State University and the University of New Mexico.