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History of an Artist: Barbara Yates
Sphinx, 1995
OCTOBER 27, 1999--"I began carving wood in Jamaica in 1990 when I made friends with a wood carver in Ocho Rios," says Yates. Her first assignment was to carve a small piece of lignum vitae, a wood she had not seen before and learned only later was one of the densest of all woods. When she stuck it out, carving a small figure in the wood, her new Jamaican friend taught her more. And from there, she proceeded by trial and error.
Earlier, Yates had studied photography and silk-screen printing at the Maidstone College of Art and Design in Maidstone, Kent, England. The rest of her art education (she also makes and teaches jewelry) has been self-directed, much of it acquired by bartering for work exchange.
Some of her carving commissions have been in trade for housing in locations as varied as Taos, New Mexico; the Zen Mountain Center near Idyllwild, California; and County Wicklow, Ireland. She recently returned to Ohio, her homestate, from a more conventional assignment as workshop leader in woodcarving at Bryn Mawr College, where she and students created benches from large fallen logs.
In an attempt, she says, to redeem what her family has called her "wasted youth," Yates has chronicled some of her nomadic adventures on her web site. She is also writing a book about her experiences that will include photographs--many of which she has already exhibited in galleries--from her travels in Jamaica, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Russia, Nepal, and other places around the world.
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