Cynthia Brannvall is an art historian and a multi-media artist who teaches art history as a full-time faculty member of Foothill Community College.
What we particularly love to see her making are textile sculptures, some of which she sources from Lacis Museum. Her process is extraordinary: she stiffens whole antique garments — and certain suggestive garment fragments — with beeswax, resin, and damar tree gum (damar mata kucing, or "cat's eye damar," a crystalline resin) from Asia.
The effect can be of ghostly manifestations, taking breath, displacing air, embodying cloth — or textural collages, full of variety and character, as spontaneous and natural-looking as moss and lichen on stone — even, as you'll see, when demarcating rather linear borders. Her method imbues life into the lifeless.
Cynthia's objectives in her art speak to her personal purpose and social activism. Of The Threads that Bind, the staggering map of the United States she constructs from scraps of fabric, all in tones of ecru and beige and white, pictured left, she said, "I always knew I wanted to do a map piece in my visual language that I had developed. I was struck by the political divide, and it reminded me of the debates over slavery and the westward expansion era of this country, so I felt compelled to make that piece."
All Cynthia's pieces are executed through these kinds of meticulously developed motivations. Delicate pieces carry heavy histories.
Cynthia's unexpectedly powerful assemblage of beeswax- and damar-infused collars, called Little Girls, Birmingham, from 2020-21, references the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church by the KKK. It's a quiet, subdued grouping that speaks volumes once its name is given. With cat's eye damar and carefully curated pieces, Cynthia gives a voice to the silenced, turns forgotten garments into monuments.
They were Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14), and Cynthia Wesley (14). Congress bestowed the highest civilian medals of honor upon them in 2013—a full half-century after the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.
We urge you, when you can, to read more about Cynthia Brannvall's amazing oeuvre.