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Connections Out
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from this node by:
My Intelligence
Network Node
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Name:
Demond Melancon
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City/Place:
New Orleans, Louisiana
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Country:
United States
Life & Work
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Bio:
Demond Melancon works solely with a needle and thread to sew glass beads onto canvas. He began this form of art in 1992 when he first became part of a 200+ year old culture known as the Black Masking Culture of New Orleans. Today as a Big Chief, Melancon is well known for creating massive suits which he wears as a Black Masker in ceremonial battles on Mardi Gras day. The suits he creates are sculptural forms based on the size of his body and are composed of intricately beaded patches revealing a collective visual narrative.
Over the past five years, Melancon has developed an emerging contemporary art practice using the same beading techniques he’s applied over the past 28 years as a Black Masker. His work has been exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Art Miami, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art in Brooklyn, and the Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans. Many of Melancon’s works honor Black subjects historically excluded from the artistic canon, often reflecting untold stories from bygone pasts to remind viewers of their interwoven shared ancestries and diasporic histories. As a self-taught artist, Melancon has been deeply influenced by the masters: from contemporary artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Barkley Hendricks, and Basquiat to Renaissance artists like Caravaggio and Botticelli.
The context of Melancon’s work reflects a broad variety of stylistic influences, features imagery rich with symbolism and meaning, and confronts stereotypical representations of Black identity. Melancon’s work reflects his deep interest in exploring the possibilities of visual storytelling and redefining the traditions of portraiture. Demond Melancon is one of the few artists to pioneer the use of glass beads as an accepted contemporary art medium in the larger arts sector. By reconsidering predominant narratives throughout our history, Melancon deliberately repositions historically overlooked subjects and reimagines institutional portrayal of the Black subject.
Melancon was born in 1978 and grew up in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. He was initially taught by a prolific elder named Big Chief Ferdinand Bigard. Melancon went on to study under Nathanial Williams in connection with a 1993 Louisiana Folklife Apprenticeship Grant. Melancon joined the Seminole Hunters and masked as a Spy Boy for over 15 years under Big Chief Keitoe Jones. In 2012 the elders of the Black Masking community declared that Melancon would then be known as Big Chief Demond Melancon of the Young Seminole Hunters, his very own tribe based in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.
He has been part of the Black Masking Culture of New Orleans since 1992 and second-lining since he began to walk. When Demond was 14 years old, he had the opportunity to learn from several influential elder Big Chiefs. They not only taught him how to sew and bead intricate suits, but also about the history and traditions of the Black Masking Culture of New Orleans – which began over 200 years ago. Prior to the Black Masking elders declaring Demond would become the Big Chief of his very own tribe, he had become very well-known as being a fierce Spy Boy for the Seminole Hunters. Big Chief Demond is well-known for his meticulous hand-sewn beadwork, use of very small beads, and attention to details often combining various types of beads (opaque, transparent, matte, metallic) and a broad spectrum of colors for effect.
The role of the Big Chief is to command and lead the tribe during practices throughout the year and in ceremonial battles on Mardi Gras Morning. A Big Chief’s prestige is often not only measured by the beauty and intricacy of his suits, but also by his command and presence within the community.
Two factors that contribute to the technical difficulty the style of Black Masking suits Demond creates are the massive size of the main aprons (the portion of a suit worn from the waist to the ankles) and the incredibly small size of the beads he uses to create them. Typically measuring at over 50 inches wide, Demond’s main aprons are also created using smaller size beads (referred to as size 11/0s which measure at 2.1 mm) than most other Black Maskers of New Orleans use. Because of the size of his suits coupled with his use of smaller beads, Demond’s suits generally take over 4,000 hours of sewing 1 million glass beads.
Clips (more may be added)
Thank you for your note below and we appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow. — Banch Abegaze (manager: Kamasi Washington)
KAMASI WASHINGTON
Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix. — Susan Rogers (personal recording engineer for Prince; recorded "Purple Rain", "Around the World in a Day", "Parade", "Sign o' the Times"... recorded David Byrne and others, much else; now is director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory)
SUSAN ROGERS
Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched! — Julian Lloyd Webber (cellist; brother of Andrew Lloyd Webber (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
JULIAN LLOYD WEBBER
This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :))) — Clarice Assad (pianist and composer; works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world)
CLARICE ASSAD
Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!! — Alicia Svigals (world's premier klezmer violinist)
ALICIA SVIGALS
I'm Sparrow. I built this matrix so that every creator on the planet would be conceivably findable and accessible from all others, beginning with musicians in Bahia, Brazil. The matrix combines recommendation by both artificial and human intelligence (human preferred) and the small-world phenomenon (responsible for the fact that most humans are within 6 steps of most others) in a simple but powerful manner which has never been used before.
SPARROW/PARDAL ROBERTS
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