The first painting you see when entering Makeba Kedem-DuBose’s house/studio is “Marthyr”. It features a large human figure, yellow and red, in front of a rustic country house surrounded by idyllic green grass. The figure is being crucified.

“I call it ‘Marthyr’ because I am a mother, an artist and a martyr,” says Kedem-DuBose, examining the painting through her shoulder-length dreadlocks. “It was right after I gave birth, and I couldn’t paint while I was pregnant with her. I felt like I was going to die if I didn’t paint.”

For Kedem-DuBose, currently represented by Nicole Gallery in River North, spirituality and art are inseparable. The quest for spiritual meaning was perhaps inevitable for the artist: her grandmother practices African ancestral worship, her father is a New Orleans spiritual leader, and she herself attended Catholic school as a child. At one point she considered being a nun.

“I want everyone to be able to enjoy what I do as an artist because it is a gift from something higher than myself,” she says. “I use colors that correspond to the chakras, the spiritual centers of the body, and use that to try and help people to realize their oneness with one another.” Her colors are deep purples, blood reds and earthy browns, colors that seem to tap into something instinctual and raw.

One example is the painting “Eggs In Waiting”, which hangs in one of her bedrooms. The horizontal piece features the torso and upper legs of five women pregnant with large, visible eggs. Across a blue sky the brown bodies twist in different profiles, as if she wants us to view pregnancy from all angles. “It’s not necessarily only about childbirth,” Kedem-DuBose explains. “It also has to do with the process of creating.”

Artistic inspiration came early to Kedem-DuBose, most directly from Father James Hasse, a Jesuit priest and artist at Holy Family School in Chicago. She was in the second grade. “We were doing some classes with him and I recall doing some piece of people skating. Instead of having wheels on the roller skates, my piece had little bugs carrying people around,” she says laughing, as if she’s reliving the moment. “So I remember he took me off to the side and said ‘You know what? I think you’ve got something we need to explore.’”

Kedem-DuBose, a self-dubbed loner, eschewed a formal art education and took to learning the arts on her own, focusing mostly on painting. She says she didn’t enter the professional arena until about a decade ago, starting enterprises such as a greeting card company and, from 1997 – 1998, opening an eclectic gallery called Makaar Studios with her graphics artist husband, Aaron. Besides curating for others including the HotHouse and Penny’s Noodle Shop, Kedem-DuBose has always been a lone entity. At least until Nicole Gallery came along a year ago.

“Prior to [March 2003] I was a solo runner – I did what I wanted to – and I was a wild child art person,” Kedem-DuBose says. “But, in December of 2002 I did a test run of some small paintings I call my girl paintings [4 x 6 g-prints] at Dara Tribal Village and the HotHouse.” Sold out exhibits at both art houses led to a spot in Nicole Gallery’s annual women’s show in March 2003.

Nicole Allourde Smith, owner of Nicole’s Gallery, immediately selected ten pieces to run in the show, as well as an additional 5 prior to the opening. All fifteen sold out, and the collaboration between Nicole Gallery and Kedem-DuBose began.

Shortly after taking Nicole Gallery’s representation, Kedem-DuBose accepted the Assistant Director position for a new gallery Smith was opening. Her stint was short, but it did remind her of her purpose. “We discussed it and decided that I really needed to be creating art because everywhere that my art was it was selling [in 2003]… a lot of my older pieces as well as my newer pieces.”

Kedem-DuBose and Nicole Gallery are now looking forward to the annual women’s show in March – except this year she’ll be part of the gallery instead of a visitor.

As for the future, Kedem-DuBose has a simple, solid ten-year plan. “I will be an international artist. I’ve been at almost all the major places here in Chicago and I’d like to take my art a step further.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 1st, 2004 at 2:55 am and is filed under Chicago Artist Coalition Artists' News, Journalism, Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.