Today we’d like to introduce you to Jas Mardis.
Jas, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I have a long career in the area as a Poet, Radio Commentator, Educator and Artist. I was inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame in 2014 for the Writing, Poetry and Editing work that I have done over the past 30 years, including editing “KenteCloth: Southwest Voices of the African Diaspora” 1999 UNT Press. I was awarded a Pushcart Prize for my poetry in that anthology. My years on the original Dallas Poetry scene resulted in four chapbooks that still pop up from time-to-time, along with folks who remember my KERA 90.1fm Morning Edition Commentaries and stints on The Glen Mitchell Show as part of “The Brain Trust”. My work with the Dallas Museum of Art’s Arts and Letters LIVE series and The City of Dallas’s, Neighborhood Touring Program also factor into the story of “how I got started” as an Artist. All of those experiences are an off-shoot of my Southern Folklore, Storytelling and Quilting artistry.
I was born in Arkansas and grew up with everyday people doing everyday things that fed my soul and continues to give me reasons to create across a large swath of disciplines. I work in fabric, leather, wood and metals, alongside using text and narrative to bring a story to life. As a kid, I walked a lot and rode the City Bus on weekends and talked to passengers on my way to the various Libraries. I mowed yards and played sandlot football for blocks around my Oak Cliff neighborhood and picked up people’s stories and experiences and ingested them into my early creativity. When I was a 7th Grade football player, my Coach saw something in me and took me to meet the Folk Artist, Willard “The Texas Kid” Watson. His yard and truck were legendary and he gave me access to keeping the Arkansas creativity alive in the new home of Texas. I still see and hear echoes of histories and hopes in the everyday home items that seem to want to tell me “who touched them” and “what songs and sorrows and hopes they had”.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
That’s a funny question. When I was a boy, I struggled with being a brute on behalf of fighting for my siblings (I was the first boy and fourth child) and working out the sensibilities of my own identity. I’ve never been soft except in the eyes of those viewing my creative results. I was athletic and aggressive and manly, but going home to secretly write poetry and trying to perfect French by way of reciting poems by Jacques Prevert to my French Teacher, Miss Diaz. At the same time, one of my Sisters had Art with a Hippy kind of guy, named Mr. Rogers. He judged a poster contest where I won with a drawing of the Black Family and took an interest in my handwriting on that piece. He encouraged me to write my poems on my drawings. Later, I was losing interest in sports and quit football to go to his class and watch him draw figures. The Coaches came and got me and ridiculed me in front of the players for quitting.
So, going thru puberty, I got hit with a lot of conflicts, including the fallout from two sisters getting pregnant, divorce, and strangely, things across the City, like landmarks and cultural things disappearing. There was a time with all of the barber and beauty shops, neighborhood stores, shade-tree mechanics and shoe shine guys and the gathering of guys hanging out and singing on the block and swapping stories seemed to just start going away. That is when I made an effort to start reminding and rekindling those artistic values in the form of my own art. If anything, that was the most difficult time. I had a favorable response to my creativity from the beginning with contests wins and publishing and older people appreciating me remembering “things”. The cost came with younger friendships and the challenges of not caring if I fit in. My writing took off and the quilting and woodworking and attempts at what people now call assemblage took a backseat. It is hard being a creative person in black male skin, but not effeminate. Even now, the one challenge that I’m continually facing down is the question of “Why do so many things?”. It is a strange question to ask a 60-year-old because now, more than ever before, I see a clear line that pulls everything in the Universe together.
We’d love to hear more about your art.
I am a Fabric Artist working primarily in fabric and leather with pyrography as a drawing tool in creating story quilts, sculptures and lite-assemblage. My current drive is creating exhibitions around themes that seek to restore stories, histories and an examination of the African-American Folk Narrative.
As a creative people find you where they find you. Social Media means that to some, I am a Blogger, Quilter, Leather Artist, Storyteller or Memoir Hack. In 2020, before Covid-19, I took on the personal journey to exhibit 100 pieces of Art from all my genres with no intention of generating a market but the dialogue about the Art. The Main Dallas Library invited me to be the inaugural Artist for the new Open Space Gallery in January. I present a two-month exhibition, “Let The Tablecloth Speak: 13 Narrative Quilts from an Heirloom Tablecloth”. I divided the tablecloth into the section where a family member sat and created a quilt that told their story or stories that their place setting inspired others to tell in their absence. It will forever be my favorite exhibition as, even as I installed it, people came into space and engaged with the quilts and were moved to various emotional connections. I included a motion-activated audio track that played snippets of real stories I recorded over the years. The effect of a family gathering was realized for visitors to space.
In the middle of that exhibition, I was invited to show art at Dallas Love Field in the Baggage Concourse and used that concurrent display to try to drive people to the Library. For that display, I chose a combination of the Fabric Art/Quilting and the leather portraits and sculptures that I’ve been doing for about three years. The response to that display led to another display invitation at the Airport and an overwhelming response by travelers to the City and those returning home. So, moving forward, I believe that the leather portrait pyrography will be my next phase identity and what sets me apart.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Easily my best memories are time spent with my Grandparents on both sides and all the fishing, storytelling, story creating, Lying, all the oral traditions like playing the dozens, retelling the classic Jokester and old-time tales that you probably call “folktales”. I cut my teeth on that stuff and it rides my spine to this day. It gave me a quick wit and an attentive ear that has allowed me to create from my soul.
My favorite memory is probably the time that we were fishing in Arkansas, where there is a catfish species known as “BLUE”. They are legendary for growing upwards of 75-to-150 pounds and can easily eat a small child. On Saturday, we saw a man in a rowboat, holding on to a cane pole that was bent, almost to breaking and dipped into the water, moving about two miles an hour in rips and circles around the lake. My Grandfather yelled, “Hey there, boy!” and the man yelled back, “Y’all got a beer? I’m wearing him down!” and my Grandmother threw the man two cold JAX beers as he went by. About twenty minutes later, the man came back with the Blue Cat laid across the row. It was bigger than me!
Pricing:
- Leather Portraits start at $200 for a 5″x7″
- Leather and Bronze statues can be commissioned and start at $500
Contact Info:
- Website: http://jasmardis.com
- Phone: 469-243-5277
- Email: MardisArt940@gmail.com
- Instagram: Jas Mardis
- Facebook: Jas Mardis
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