Bethany Collins facts for kids

Bethany Collins (born 1984 in Montgomery, Alabama) is an American artist. She earned her first degree from the University of Alabama in 2007. Later, she received her Master of Fine Arts degree from Georgia State University in 2012. Her art often explores the connection between race and language. She uses materials like dictionaries, journals, encyclopedias, and newspapers in her work.

Collins grew up in the Southern United States. She is biracial, meaning she has parents from different racial backgrounds. This experience made her want to explore definitions and old texts. She wanted to find their hidden meanings. People often assumed she and her family were not related. This made her feel pressure to define her own racial identity. Others found it hard to place her into simple racial categories. She describes her art as a way to understand the "black/white" ideas of race in the American South.

Collins also grew up in a Presbyterian church. This had a big impact on her art later on. Her church held 72-hour Bible readings. Children would sign up for a time slot and read until the next person arrived. Collins found beauty in this. Often, no one else was in the church to hear them read. She realized that "a sacred text was still worthy of being read back into the world, even when no one was listening." This idea influenced her performance art style today.

Bethany Collins: Her Art Career

Collins became known for her art's purpose quite early. Most articles about her describe her as a "multidisciplinary artist." This means she uses many different art forms. Her work is "conceptually driven." This means it starts with an idea. She explores how race and language connect. Collins is known for how much physical effort she puts into her creative process. She works until it's too difficult to continue. Her art style is very special. She has received a lot of praise for it.

She was part of the 2019 traveling art show called Young, Gifted, and Black. This show featured art from the Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection. Collins also created an installation called America: A Hymnal. This was for the 2021 exhibition Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle. It was shown at the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.

In 2022, Collins's artwork, The Aeneid 1876 /1990, was part of the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) 60th anniversary Art Show. Also, from late 2022 to early 2023, her work was in a group exhibit. This show was at The Print Center of New York. It was called "Visual Record: The Materiality of Sound in Print."

Her art is part of the collection at the Studio Museum in Harlem. She was an Artist-in-Residence there from 2013 to 2014.

Important Artworks by Bethany Collins

• White Noise (2010) Series
  • This series includes works like "Don't You Think That's a Little Elitist?" (2010) and "Maybe You Should Make It Into a Slaveship" (2010). It also features "Do People Ever Think You're White?" III (2011) and "It Was So Much More Intellectual Before You Told Me That" (2011). Other pieces are "(Unrelated)" (2012) and "I Wish I Was Black" (2012).
    • Collins was the only person of color in her Master of Fine Arts program. She often had "awkward" talks about race and identity. During a review of her art piece "Provin It", someone asked, "Don't you think that's a little elitist?" This piece referred to the Brown Paper Bag Test. Her classmates felt left out because they didn't know about it. More questions came up about Collins's work. Some suggested, "Maybe You Should Make It Into a Slaveship" to make the story easier to understand. The White Noise series grew to include questions from outside her graduate school. She says these questions were attempts to find a simple answer to race in the U.S. and to understand her own background.

• The Odyssey (2018–present)
  • This series uses different translations of Odyssey. Collins erases most of the text. Only one sentence is left readable in each version. All versions are shown side by side.
    • Collins erased each line by hand using her own saliva. Each phrase comes from a moment in the epic poem. This is when Odysseus is left on shore but doesn't recognize his home.

• The Star Spangled Banner: A Hymnal (2020)
  • This series has three charcoal and acrylic paintings. Each painting features lyrics from different versions of The Star-Spangled Banner.
    • This series highlights forgotten lyrics from past versions of the national anthem. Collins researched 100 different versions. She bound each version into a single book. She used a laser to cut out each musical note. The artwork tells American history from many viewpoints. Each tries to define what it means to be American. Collins includes versions used to support different causes. These include the Confederacy and the Women's Suffrage movement. Collins says this series "challenges the idea of a single American Identity." She explains that the smudges, burn marks, and smell are important parts of her work. She says, "the more the book is read and the pages turned, the more complicated and messy the work becomes." This artwork is "fragile," much like the ideas of democracy it celebrates.

• The Aeneid: 2017 / 2020 (2022)
  • This work continues Collins's Odyssey series.
    • In this piece, she compares translations of Aeneid. This is when Aeneas is lost at sea. She shows the same passage from different translations. The first, from 2017, says, "Violently we're blown off course and wander blindly through boiling waves." The second, from 2020, says, "Off course, we flail, with nothing left to reckon by." These works are seen as a story that relates to our country's political situation. They show people feeling lost.

• The Dixie of Our Union (2022)
  • This series has ten parts on paper. It refers to the song Dixie (song), also known as the anthem of the Confederacy.
    • This work is a new version of Collins's Dixie's Land (1859-2001) from 2019-2020. Each version features charcoal drawings of moments of protest and social change. These drawings are placed over the sheet music. In this series, Collins only uses versions of the song used by the Union. This choice connects Dixie not just to the South, but to the whole nation. Collins explains that American songs, with their changing lyrics, try to describe who we are. This is true even with our biggest contradictions.

• Auld Lang Syne (2022)
  • This is a sound installation. It goes along with The Star-Spangled Banner series and The Dixie of Our Union series. It was shown at Collins's exhibition at Patron Gallery.
    • This installation plays fifty-one versions of Auld Lang Syne at the same time. Five different singers perform them. The focus is on the version sung by British soldiers during World War I. The melody stays the same, even as the lyrics change. Collins calls this "familiar chaos."

The Impact of Bethany Collins's Art

In mid-2021, the Promise, Witness, Remembrance exhibition opened at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville. Collins was one of the artists featured. Collins's art helps to show and teach people about American ideas. It explores the country's founding, history, and the promises connected to its symbols. Her work also asks people to see what is happening in American society today. It highlights promises that have not been kept. Finally, her art offers a deep look at old racism that still exists in today's popular symbols and songs. It aims to open people's eyes and help ensure that important moments and people are not forgotten.