Xenobia Bailey is an artist known for her colorful crochet hats, mandalas, and tents inspired by African and African American aesthetics. She studied ethnomusicology and received a BA in industrial design. Bailey has been artist-in-residence at several museums and is creating a ceiling design for the MLK Library Grand Reading Room featuring draped and suspended acoustic baffles with digital collages of her crochet works, maps, and images related to African American history and culture.

1. Xenobia Bailey
Public Art @ MLK
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
(Central) Library Grand Reading
Room Ceiling Design

2. Xenobia Bailey studied ethnomusicology at the University of Washington; it was
there that her interest in the humanities, material culture, craftsmanship and textiles
took full bloom. She worked as a costume designer for the renowned African-
American community repertory theater, Black Arts West, until her acceptance into
Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1974. She received her BA in industrial design, after
which she began to develop colors, patterns and shapes based on her experimental
energy theory and to sell crocheted headwear, inspired by the aesthetic of the rural
and urban African American homemakers. Bailey is best known for her “cosmic”
crochet hats, large scale crochet mandalas and tents, consisting of colorful
concentric circles and pulsating repeated patterns. Her pieces are connected to her
epic project Paradise Under Reconstruction in the Aesthetic of Funk. Her designs
draw upon diverse personal, multicultural, literary, and domestic influences including
Ancient African History, African American literature, Native American creation
stories and Eastern philosophies, with undertones of the Urban Funk aesthetic
which has evolved since the 1970's. Bailey has been artist-in-residence at the
Museum of Arts and Design, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Society
for Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh; the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation, New
York; and Site Santa Fe, NM. She is the recipient of a 2016 A Blade of Grass
Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art. Her exhibitions include the Studio Museum in
Harlem; the Jersey City Museum; the New Museum of Contemporary Art; the High
Museum of Art in Atlanta; and the Sharjah Art Foundation, United Arab Emirates.
Her work is in the permanent collections at Facebook, New York; the Schomburg
Center for Research in Black Culture; the Allentown Art Museum; the Museum of
Contemporary Arts; and the Museum of Arts and Design.

3. Photograph of finished Hudson Yards Subway (A) Station, #1. Mosaic circular.
34th Street 11th Ave, New York City 2015.

4. Illustration of Hudson Yards Subway (A) Station, (#1. Mosaic) circular.
34th Street 11th Ave, New York City 2015.

5. Illustration of Hudson Yards Subway (A) Station (#2. Mosaic) over escalators.
34th Street 11th Ave, New York City 2015.

6. Illustration of Hudson Yards Subway (B) Station, (#1. Mosaic). 34th Street 12th
Ave, New York City 2015.

7. View 1, Mixed Media Collage: Crochet, digital print, chalk drawing, paint, glitter, and
rhinestones. FACEBOOK Campus: Engineers work area, New York City. 2017.

8. View 2, Mixed Media Collage: Crochet, digital print, chalk drawing, paint, glitter, and
rhinestones. FACEBOOK Campus: Engineers work area, New York City. 2017.

9. View 2, Mixed Media Collage: Crochet, digital print, chalk drawing, paint, glitter, and
rhinestones. FACEBOOK Campus: Engineers work area, New York City. 2017.

10. Drape custom printed acoustic baffles across
the ceiling.
Suspend 4 custom acoustic baffle banners,
printed on the back and front.
Images: Top draping, constellations using digital
images of a very few crochet pieces.
Panel images: Top image constellations, lower
image maps of First Nation Nacotchtank
People. Banneker Map. Map today. Howard
University Drum Major. Mahalia Jackson at the
March on Washington. The Rotunda, the White
House, Duke Ellington record.

13. Benjamin Banneker
and
George Washington
Reading Map of
The plans for
Washington DC.
(Draft concept for
digital collage)

14. Map of the First
Nation Nacotchtank,
which now is
Washington DC
(Draft concept for
digital collage)

15. PROPOSED MEANS OF
ATTACHMENT
Attaching the drape and banners by
a long beam that is attached to the
ceiling.
I will be collaborating with the
fabricators that will be installing the
work.