VIRGINIA TYLER
bio
Virginia Tyler has worked on metal casting projects in Ghana since her Fulbright fellowship in 1998. Her most recent installations are collaborations with Paul Amponsah and Kofi Amponsem, who are metal casters working in the ancient West African tradition. The current pieces are based on constellations that are visible from both Ghana and the US. Ms. Tyler earned a BA in Art and Public policy at Duke University, and a MFA in Sculpture at Tyler School of Art, Temple University. She is a tenured associate professor at Saint Augustine’s University in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Awards and Grants:
Uses of Antiquity Conference Study Grant, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, funded by Council of Independent Colleges, 2014
African Arts Institute Assistant in Metal Casting, African Arts Institute of Northern Kentucky University, Cincinnati, Ohio & Hutchinson C College, Hutchinson, KS, funded by National Endowment for the Arts, 2011
International Study Grant, West African Research Center, Dakar, Senegal, funded by Howard University and West African Research Center, 2001
US Fulbright Fellowship, College of Art at Kwami Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana, 1998-99
statement
“My installations are drawings in space large enough for people to walk through. Inspired by constellations in the night sky, I hang chunks of coal, steel rods, iron and bronze metal castings, and black glass beads from the ceiling to make a loose maze that viewers navigate on their own. Humans have made drawings between starry dots of light throughout our existence. Some have lasted for millennia: Cassiopeia, the Queen; Draco, the Snake-in-the-Sky; Delphinus, the Dolphin. I use these eternal patterns as a springboard for sculptural drawings that anchor me to Earth.
I conceived these works while living in Ghana. I spent a year there on a Fulbright grant to study traditional metal casting techniques and have returned many times since. In Ghana my view of the world changed. Even the stars seemed to tilt because I was in a different spot on the globe. Seeing the sky from a new perspective, I imagined making a necklace for the Queen of Heaven, Cassiopeia, an African queen who is supposed to have been turned into a constellation because her beauty surpassed the immortals.
Many of the constellations and their stories have an African angle that I learned from my mentor, Joseph Agyemang. He taught me the thousand year-old techniques of West African metal casting and the traditions of Ashanti culture. The bronze and brass beads we made are individual sculptures. Strung together, they are brilliant stars, as yellow as brass, rosy as copper, or golden as bronze. Paul Amponsah and Kofi Amponsem, Joseph’s assistant metal casters, collaborated with me to make the bronze beads for the installations and shared traditional stories as we worked. I consider them co-creators.
For over a decade I have gone to Ghana to cast my own metal pieces and collaborate on projects that bring education for girls into the village. They have paid the school fees for three girls who would not have gotten a good education otherwise. The girls all graduated recently.
Lately I have been making more artwork using objects from nature as well as cast metal. My most recent piece, Sun and Planet, includes a butterfly wing that flutters at the slightest air current. It is as alive as a leaf—and as precious as bronze.” — Virginia Tyler
work
Snake-in-the-Sky, v1
Coal, steel rod, bronze beads, monofilament
9x9x12ft
2013
Snake-in-the-Sky, detail
Coal, steel rod, bronze beads, monofilament
9x9x12ft
2013
Virginia, Paul Amponsah, and Kofi Amponsem
“Cassiopeia”
5x12x15 ft (dimensions variable)
cast copper alloy, steel rod, glass beads, wire and nylon line
2011
Virginia, Paul Amponsah, and Kofi Amponsem
“Cassiopeia”
5x12x15 ft (dimensions variable)
cast copper alloy, steel rod, glass beads, wire and nylon line
2011
Virginia, Paul Amponsah, and Kofi Amponsem
Detail, “Cassiopeia”
5x12x15 ft (dimensions variable)
cast copper alloy, steel rod, glass beads, wire and nylon line
2011