Nationality American | Children Saturn Williams | |
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Born 1972 Chicago, Illinois Alma maters University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Clark Atlanta University Similar Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman, Persia White | ||
Marcia Jones (born circa 1972, Chicago IL) is a professor and contemporary artist, known for her multimedia and large-scale installation works.
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Early life and education
Jones was born premature at Chicago’s Little Company of Mary Hospital to Paul Davis and Christine Jones. After moving many times with her mother, she spent her high school years in Los Angeles, CA at Marshall High School. Jones majored in Fashion Design at Clark Atlanta University and moved to New York in 1995 after being inspired by artists like Radcliffe Bailey to pursue fine art. She studied under Juan Logan, Kojo Griffin, Susan Page and Cora Cohen at UNC Greensboro to earn her MFA in visual arts in 2004.
Personal life
Jones met poet Saul Williams after moving to New York and in 1996 birthed their daughter, Saturn River Renge, after sixty-hour labor. In 2004, three days after earning her MFA, Jones was hospitalized and diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.
Career
Jones moved to New York in 1995 to pursue fashion design and worked for Harriette Cole before finding her calling as a fine artist. She was a performance painter with the Brooklyn Bohemian scene at Brooklyn Moon Cafe that incubated the beginnings of careers such as Mos Def, Common, Saul Williams, Erykah Badu, Kevin Powell, and Sarah Jones. Her work appears on as the cover art for Saul Williams' book, The Seventh Octave and his album, Amethyst Rock Star, and she collaborated with him on his book, S/HE.
Jones' work was featured on numerous book covers and has had work at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Rush Arts Gallery and The 18th street Art Center, Weatherspoon Art Museum, The Greensboro Artist League, New Image Art Gallery, and Spelman College. She was a Professor of Art at Clark Atlanta University 2004-2009
Jones' work explores personal identity, sexuality, history and the female paradigm. Her exhibition at the Harvey B. Gantt Center explored the dichotomy of the virgin and the whore through an analogy with Haitian Voodoo motifs and Magic City strip club culture. There was significant controversy about the piece.
In 2011 Jones was chosen to discuss creativity on a panel for Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. She was featured in the Afropunk Showcase at Moogfest in 2014. In 2005 she received a Caversham Printmaking Fellowship and attended the Spelman College Taller Portobello Artist Colony in 2006.