Video still from Jacolby Satterwhite's "Country Ball 1989-2012"

Country Ball 1989 - 2012

2012

Jacolby Satterwhite

American, born 1986

As a young boy, Jacolby Satterwhite wondered about his mother’s overwhelming imagination. She constantly drew pictures of new inventions that she wanted to produce for sale on television’s QVC channel. When he grew older and realized she was schizophrenic, he made her drawings come alive in vivid animations. Her talents helped fuel his creation of an alternative universe.

Satterwhite explains: “Country Ball is the attempt to re-create a home video from the late 1980s of my family’s Mother’s Day cookout. My process involved looking at 35 of my mother’s drawings that illustrated outdoor recreational utilities. I traced my mother’s drawings by hand onto the computer, imported them into a 3-D program, and built them to create a computer-generated landscape. I performed in front of the camera and green screen 100 times, later inserting those videos into the virtual space to create a Hieronymus Bosch Garden of Earthly Delights–inspired landscape. This gesture is an attempt to use drawing, performance, and technology as devices to translate and document a personal mythology.”

HD digital video with color 3D animation, sound

12 min., 39 sec.

Modern Art Acquisition Fund

2013.3

Provenance: The artist; purchased via [Monya Rowe Gallery, New York] by Seattle Art Museum, 2013

Video still from Jacolby Satterwhite's "Country Ball 1989-2012"

Not currently on view

Media

For SAM’s My Favorite Things series in 2015, artist Jacolby Satterwhite discusses his video work Country Ball 1989 - 2012.

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Disguise: Masks and Global African Art, June 18 - Sept. 7, 2015 (Los Angeles, California, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Oct. 18, 2015 - Mar. 13, 2016; Brooklyn, New York, Brooklyn Museum, Apr. 29 - Sept. 18, 2016).

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Lessons from the Institute of Empathy, Mar. 31, 2018 - ongoing.

Published References"Jacolby Satterwhite Dances with His Self," on Art: 21, https://vimeo.com/72497737, 2013

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