Mildred Howard. Switchin' in the Kitchen
The artist’s hands have a powerful presence in the work of Mildred Howard. Touch is evident in her earliest collages, where tears, stitches, and intimately penned elements mark surfaces. In Switchin’ in the Kitchen: From Dakar to Detroit & the Mississippi Delta (2013), seamlessly cast bronze sculptures of the artist’s hands hold, spin, scrub, and extend from vintage vinyl records—including Billie Holiday’s I’ll Be Seeing You (Commadore, 1944) and Buddy Johnson’s It Was Swell Knowing You (Decca, 1947). They are intimate memorials, dedications to memories that the artist’s hands set in motion and reminders of an adage Howard’s friend, the artist David Ireland, once shared with her and that she now teaches her students: “If you don’t do anything, nothing happens.”1
Mildred Howard, in Peter Selz, “Spirit and Matter: Conversation with Mildred Howard,” Sculpture 34, no. 10 (December 2015): 42. ↩︎