Nourishing and Flourishing with Delight (2019)

Title

Nourishing and Flourishing with Delight (2019)

Artist

Eric Ricks

Location

Maya Angelou Charter School, 5600 East Capitol St., NE

Visual Description

A smiling Maya Angelou, wearing a large circular hat, gestures, beside a multicolored design evocative of a Compass Rose and a bird’s nest. A large bird approaches the nest as if to feed the smaller bird within. To the left is one of Angelou’s well known  quotes, “If you always try to be normal, you’ll never know how amazing you can be.”

Interpretive Note

The mandala-like nest, with its two birds, may convey the contrasting birds that Angelou has explored in her writing, especially her debut memoir, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings (1969). We see the contrast between the tree bird that soars on its own, and the caged bird that nonetheless sings (“the fearful trill of things unknown”) and dreams of freedom.

Prompts for close looking: 

1. How does the artist convey a sense of movement across the work, including through the design of the background motifs?

2. How do you understand the relationship between the two birds, one somewhat confined, and the other flying free?

3. How sholud we understand the circular elements above Maya Angelou’s head? Is it a halo, or a large sunhat? What precisely does it share with the large mandala or nest to her right?

4. How are we to understand Angelou’s gestures and expression? Is she perhaps singing? Is she perhaps giving voice to that song that “the caged bird sings”? Recall that in her memoir she recounts a multi year period of muteness following childhood trauma, leading to her reclaiming her voice.