American Craft

Funk and the Spirit

by Paulette Young

For Xenobia Bailey, crochet is much more than a domestic craft. It’s a jubilant, post-traumatic healing balm and a redeemer of material culture.

Throughout her decades-long career, the artist, designer, cultural activist, and visual storyteller—perhaps best known for her vibrant and cosmic African-inspired headwear—has crocheted wall and floor mandalas, tents, and garments using her hands, four-ply yarns, and barrel-shaped plastic pony beads. Her work has evolved into major public installations that embody a design philosophy she calls “Paradise Under Reconstruction in the Aesthetic of Funk.”

And what funk—which she remixes into “funktion”—means to Bailey is complex. Rooted in the ingenuity and sustainable practices of African American homemakers across time—including making do with what is at hand, creating vibrant beauty from humble materials, and facing hard times with resistance, faith, vigor, and energy—it cultivates a passionate spirit charged with uplifting emotional power. “This is a continuation of a non-commercialized craftiness, engineering, and design practice from rural and urban communities that gave birth to the funk, blues, and gospel music of the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s,” she says. “It’s a material culture that has a never-ending, germinating life cycle.”

Her crochet mandalas start with “a simple primal shape: a circle” and flourish into tapestries of concentric circles and repeating geometric patterns that create vibrations on different visual frequencies. Often they’re embellished with plastic pony beads and glittering metallic filaments.

Some of her one-of-a-kind sculptural crowns are inspired by African headdresses, decorative hair braiding, and traditional design patterns and color affinities of different cultures. Throughout the 1980s, these crowns appeared all over: in Elle magazine, in Benetton and Absolut Vodka ad campaigns, on TV in The Cosby Show and A Different World, and in Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing.

Finding fiber. Bailey didn’t start out as a fiber artist. After studying ethno-musicology at the University of Washington, she earned a BFA in industrial design in the late 1970s from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. But finding work was challenging due to her natural appreciation of African aesthetics, which were not broadly recognized in the industrial arts and design field, so she sent a letter to New York City mayor Edward Koch describing her plight, and he referred her to CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act), a short-lived, federally funded employment program for artists. She accepted a position located in the then-Italian and Polish neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where she taught art classes for children centered on crafting functional objects with recycled paper containers from the lunch program. The project, housed in an old Catholic school, also provided her with a beautiful old classroom for a studio, filled with natural light.

After the workday, she returned to her apartment, where she created wooden toys and furniture for sale using exotic woods from around the world. But “sawing and sanding hardwoods in an apartment wasn’t healthy or easy,” she says. “I started searching for materials that were more conducive to my workspace.”

So she learned how to crochet from fellow CETA artist Bernadette Sonona, a needleworker whom Bailey describes as a master craftswoman. “Bernadette taught me everything I needed to know in just two days,” she says. “She taught a basic, free-form, fundamental type of crochet of comfortably holding the yarn with good tension as it moves through one’s fingers to make the desired stitches.” Bailey first learned the chain stitch and single stitch, then the double stitch, how to increase and decrease stitches, and how to change colors and create patterns. “I taught myself how to add beads,” she says.

It was a technique that Bailey says “felt comfortable.” For her, crochet is “an intuitive human skill” based on “a system of knots” that is easily manipulated once you’ve learned the basics. Within days, she had learned all that she needed to in order to construct what she calls her “deferred material culture.”

Plus, the materials were highly accessible. “I just took a trip to the Woolworths variety store for yarn and a hook, and I was in business,” she says.

Growing up with a funktional aesthetic. Picking up crochet was also a return to familial visual aesthetics for Bailey. Growing up in Seattle, the family home had a wood-burning heater, “but most of the house was cold,” she says. “Over a period of time, my mother purchased a multitude of beautiful handcrocheted afghans and handmade quilts from the local Goodwill store, which doubled as wraps. There were always several afghans draped over a chair or couch or folded at the foot of a bed in our house to keep off a chill.”

Her home environment was filled with functional, decorative objects constructed from humble materials. Unable to find or afford an African American presence in the popular ceramic figurines and sculptural home decor of the time, Bailey’s mother instead graced the space with her own hands. “My mother and the women in my community created from found objects,” she says. “When I was a child, she made flower arrangements from newspapers and Better Homes & Gardens magazines because of the colorful pages.” She also created their clothing, curtains, and furniture cushions using mismatched textiles. “It was a funky-chic urban household aesthetic,” Bailey says. “It brought a special kind of energy to our home."