November 2021 Featured Artist
Artist Uses Her Life Experiences to Nurture a Career in the Arts
An Interview with Fine Artist
Carolyn Mae Lassiter
Carolyn Posing with Her Piece "Shirley"
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Carolyn Mae Lassiter has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico since 1982 with her husband, Edmond Rabkin, and their daughter, Lara. Carolyn’s art is representative of her soulful and thoughtful self-expression.
Carolyn engaged in a rich and diverse informal education, learning through life experience. Her early years were spent in Ahoskie, North Carolina. When she was thirteen, Carolyn and her family moved to Queens, New York. After meeting her husband in New York, the two decided to travel to Mexico. It was while living in Mexico that she was drawn to art as an expression of herself. Her early work consisted of drawings using black ink on paper which evolved into paintings using mixed media (acrylic, oil, decoupage, wax, fabrics, paper maché). Carolyn was never afraid to experiment with new materials. She also creates sculptures using found objects. The majority of these life-size goddesses dwell outdoors. Female energy is an obvious theme in Carolyn's work, and she will often mention the fact that she raised a daughter and was one of four sisters; so, “she likes her girls.” Additional themes include dreams, spirituality, life in the country, family and animals. She uses a variety of mediums and applications: bold saturated color, ink with muted watercolor accents, and mixed media (incorporating her sculpture into her paintings). The core spirit of Carolyn’s art is unmistakably hers and undeniably her as her mediums change, evolve and combine. |
She has shown her critically acclaimed work throughout the U.S. in solo and group exhibitions. This list includes: Santa Fe Society of Artists (New Mexico); the College of Santa Fe and El Zocalo (Santa Fe, New Mexico); Southwestern Cultural Center (Albuquerque, New Mexico); Bill Hodges Gallery; Danny Simmons Corridor Gallery (New York); Luise Ross Gallery and Puck Show (New York, New York); Barbara Archer Gallery (Atlanta, Georgia); High Museum and Aliya Gallery (Atlanta, Georgia); State Capitol Building (Santa Fe, New Mexico). Her most recent exhibitions include the University of Massachusetts - Augusta Savage Gallery and The Intersections Group show at Vital Spaces Santa Fe, New Mexico (Summer 2021).
She shows her work by appointment only from her home studio in Santa Fe.
She shows her work by appointment only from her home studio in Santa Fe.
Emma and Her Girls
Mixed Media: 40 X 30 inches © Carolyn Mae Lassiter |
Tina the Dancer
Mixed Media: 36 x 24 inches © Carolyn Mae Lassiter |
Myrna Beth Haskell, executive editor, spoke with Carolyn about her heritage, her journey as an artist, including the inspiration from the folk art she admired while living in Mexico, and the themes found in her work.
Tell me a bit about your life growing up in North Carolina.
Tell me a bit about your life growing up in North Carolina.
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I was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1945, but I spent my childhood in North Carolina picking cotton and tobacco and growing peanuts on a sharecropper farm. My sister and I stayed out of school during tobacco or peanut season. I had a limited education because of this. We moved up North to East Elmhurst, Queens when I was thirteen. I went to junior high there, and I only finished a little bit of high school. I couldn’t read and didn’t get the help I needed because I was never diagnosed with dyslexia. But I was pretty and managed to bluff my way through life’s problems. I had keen survival skills, too.
It was unheard of, but I ended up moving from East Elmhurst to Madison Avenue. It was during the Civil Rights Movement when I worked as a receptionist for the prominent Benton & Bowles advertising agency. During this time, businesses on Madison Avenue were told they needed to address the fact that they had no black people working there. So, I was hired and put at the reception desk on the floor where all the art directors and copy writers worked. I also did some freelance modeling and freelance photography. I had my face on signs and subways in New York, and I still hadn’t learned to read. |
Quiet City
Mixed Media: 38 x 46 inches © Carolyn Mae Lassiter |
238th Street and Lenox
Mixed Media: 36 x 36 inches © Carolyn Mae Lassiter |
Did you wind up going back to school? Well, I met my husband 53 years ago, and he was the one I confided in about not being able to read. He told me that I was smarter than him and convinced me to go to NYU and hire a tutor. Did you have an affinity for design? I had a great mentor. There was this older guy I used to talk to when I was a receptionist at Benton & Bowles. He had great style and was always meeting with directors. I told him one day when he came out of a meeting, ‘You know, Joe, I want to do what you do.’ He was the first man I ever met who didn’t see me as a pretty face. He taught me about photography, and he started to see that I was really interested in the business. He showed me a lot about how to get around the Madison Avenue crowd. I worked as his assistant for a while. I learned a lot from him, and I soaked up everything. He told me to take advantage of the opportunities that came to me. |
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Your family tree includes Native Americans, correct?
The Native American culture of the Southwest has fascinated me since I moved here [Santa Fe] in 1982. I felt a real kinship for this culture. But it wasn’t until more recently, when my family in North Carolina began to do research on our family history, that I became aware that part of my heritage is with indigenous people. My father’s family is more visibly mixed than my mother’s. Part of my heritage from my father’s side includes members of the Meherrin Native American Tribe – my father’s great-grandmother was a prominent member of the tribe. We’re also African. You’re a self-taught artist. What inspired you to pursue your own art? After New York, I lived in Cuernavaca, Mexico with my husband for 11 years. That’s where my daughter was born. People from the mountains of Guerrero would come into the city to sell their arts and crafts to tourists. I admired this young man’s art, and I invited him to live with us. We started to give him art supplies. He had worked the fields of Guerrero, and I had worked the fields in North Carolina. So, I felt a real connection with him. He became family. As he moved from tourist art to self-expression, I was completely fascinated. He was doing so well with his art, so I thought it would be good for me to see what I could do. I never say no to a challenge. |
Some of the Clark Family
Mixed Media: 30 x 24 inches © Carolyn Mae Lassiter |
The Connection
Handmade Paper & Ink: 16 x 20 inches © Carolyn Mae Lassiter |
What a Night for Music
Mixed Media: 20 x 22 inches © Carolyn Mae Lassiter |
What prompted you to open a gallery in Santa Fe?
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We had so much artwork in Cuernavaca which we sold by ‘appointment only’ to tourists. We had a lot of work by Marcial [the young man Carolyn and her husband took in]* as well as his brothers' and cousins' artwork. We brought the art we hadn’t sold to Sante Fe.
I opened the gallery and ran it for several years. I was selling a lot of Marcial’s work and other folk art I had collected in Mexico – masks, costumes, jewelry, paintings. I had a wrack with my drawings downstairs in the basement – I wasn’t featuring it. I thought of it as something I was doing to express myself. I didn’t think it should be sold next to Marcial’s work which I greatly admired. But people would go down there and flip through my drawings. I wound up selling a lot of my work that way. Owning a gallery was a full-time job. I’d go in early in the morning and would often come back after dinner because sometimes the night traffic was better than the day traffic. *The late Marcial Camilo Ayala’s artwork is now part of museum collections. |
Carolyn (right) with her daughter, Lara: A Day at the Market (2021)
Carolyn loves to dress in ethnic clothing. |
What’s your favorite medium to work with?
I don’t have a favorite medium. What I’m creating at the time is what I’m loving. It might be collage one day, but if I walk away from it, I might come back and work with another medium. I’m not thinking. I’m just doing. I’m experimenting all the time with different mediums.
My husband, daughter and I have a business where we sell wall coverings made from hand-pound bark (or barkskin).* We originally sold it to art supply stores, but now we sell to high-end designers and architects. It was in Obama’s White House and in his house now. His interior decorator has bought from us for years. It’s a very forgiving product, and I use the bark paper a lot when I paint. Marcial used to use it.** I use oil bars, watered down acrylic and ink on the bark.
*Barkskin™ Wallcoverings from Caba Company.
**Amate bark painting is a Mexican folk art developed in the state of Puebla, but today it is mainly practiced in the state of Guerrero.
I don’t have a favorite medium. What I’m creating at the time is what I’m loving. It might be collage one day, but if I walk away from it, I might come back and work with another medium. I’m not thinking. I’m just doing. I’m experimenting all the time with different mediums.
My husband, daughter and I have a business where we sell wall coverings made from hand-pound bark (or barkskin).* We originally sold it to art supply stores, but now we sell to high-end designers and architects. It was in Obama’s White House and in his house now. His interior decorator has bought from us for years. It’s a very forgiving product, and I use the bark paper a lot when I paint. Marcial used to use it.** I use oil bars, watered down acrylic and ink on the bark.
*Barkskin™ Wallcoverings from Caba Company.
**Amate bark painting is a Mexican folk art developed in the state of Puebla, but today it is mainly practiced in the state of Guerrero.
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Are your drawings and paintings spontaneous or do you plan?
They’re spontaneous. I’m connecting with something that I didn’t know I had, and it comes from me very naturally. I start something in the studio, then I’ll put it in another room or by the fireplace and look at it for a while. When I’m in my studio, I lose myself. I work on two to three things at a time. I usually know when a painting is finished, but I don’t know where I'm going when I start. |
"When I’m in my studio, I lose myself. I work on two to three things at a time. I usually know when a painting is finished, but I don’t know where I'm going when I start." ~ Carolyn Mae Lassiter |
Goddesses Above
Mixed Media: 36 x 48 inches © Carolyn Mae Lassiter |
Female energy and empowerment, family, camaraderie and connection are themes I’m seeing throughout your work.
A big influence for me is very strong women. I’ve been surrounded by strong women my entire life. I lived with my aunt Bert. She could do anything. She was a great baker and cook. She worked hard every day and would come home and make a dress for me so that I could have something special to wear to school the next day. I was close with many of my aunts, those on my father’s side, too. Female energy is something I can relate to, and I gravitate to women when it comes to friendships. And one of those friendships is with renowned author Alice Walker. How did you meet her? I met her when my husband and I went to Albuquerque to listen to her read The Temple of My Familiar. My husband suggested that we get to know her. Carolyn laughs. I said, ‘Are you crazy? Everyone in this room wants to know her.’ |
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I then stood in a long line to buy some books as gifts and have her autograph them. We connected right away. I told her I lived in Santa Fe, and she complimented me on the earrings I had on. The next day, I went downtown to model for one of the stores there, and Alice was sitting on a bench with her daughter eating ice cream. I gave those earrings to her, and she gave me a big kiss. We have a lot in common. We’re both around the same age, and we both have indigenous blood. She also worked on a farm like me as a child, but her mother made her go to school first. I don’t think I really understood what I was missing by not going to school. You just do what you’re told to do as a child.
Alice once said to me, ‘Aren’t we lucky we can redefine ourselves?’ There are animals in many of your paintings. Are you projecting a oneness with all living things? I love animals, but I also love the earth. I wish we could all get along – animals and people. I relate to certain animals, such as alligators, turtles, fish…fanciful animals, too (not quite a giraffe, not quite a rhinoceros). I’m not trying to represent a particular person or animal. As I’m painting, I decide this needs to be a turtle. It’s whatever comes out of me. What do you hope the viewer takes away from your work? I hope what they see is that my work is different. That I’m serious – that I have to get these works out of me and onto the paper. |
At Calm Times
Mixed Media: 40 x 30 inches © Carolyn Mae Lassiter |
Where do you see yourself ten years from now?
I’ll be 76 on November 4th, and I see myself continually painting. I’m also hoping to put aside some of my paintings that are considered important. I’d like to begin to organize and [categorize] my work.
Where do you find sanctuary?
I find sanctuary here in Santa Fe – in my home and in my studio. The lines have become blurred as to what is my studio and what is my living space. My home is so full of my art. I am grateful to have the time and the peace of mind to do my artwork. My sanctuary is through the process of how I work – how I take what’s within me to create. I find sanctuary in this quiet time - I don’t listen to music while I’m working.
I’ll be 76 on November 4th, and I see myself continually painting. I’m also hoping to put aside some of my paintings that are considered important. I’d like to begin to organize and [categorize] my work.
Where do you find sanctuary?
I find sanctuary here in Santa Fe – in my home and in my studio. The lines have become blurred as to what is my studio and what is my living space. My home is so full of my art. I am grateful to have the time and the peace of mind to do my artwork. My sanctuary is through the process of how I work – how I take what’s within me to create. I find sanctuary in this quiet time - I don’t listen to music while I’m working.
Shirley
Mixed Media: 48 x 38 inches © Carolyn Mae Lassiter |
Carolyn's Incredible Sculpture Work Can Be Found from Her Website
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