Louis and Sam

Inspired by the collage practice and improvisational genius of jazz legend and Corona resident Louis Armstrong, Louis & Sam is a site-responsive wall installation that draws on intergenerational narratives, historical memory, and the influences of artistic and personal ancestry. Vernon’s practice becomes intertwined with Armstrong’s work as a visual artist, utilizing the fronts and backs of reel-to-reel audio tape boxes as surfaces for his serial compositions of clippings, photographs, and ephemera. In Louis & Sam, Vernon advances this use of repetition in her own Xerox drawings, patterns, and textiles, which are informed by Gothic and Afro-Deco motifs. Her multi-step production process is derived from printmaking techniques, where images are hand-drawn, photocopied, transformed, and reproduced again many times, often abstracting the original drawing in an act of “ghosting.” To create this immersive environment, Vernon has developed a visual language that surfaces as a performance of collage-making, in particular the collage-making of black experience.