ROBERT EARL PAIGE: UNITED COLORS OF PAIGE

On the occasion of his 2024 Hyde Park Art Center exhibition United Colors of Robert Earl Paige, TWM worked with artist Robert Earl Paige to create a woven textile inspired by a drawing on graph paper made by his daughter (9 years old at the time of the drawing).

The title of the show references the title of this drawing, which echoes the sentiment of the controversial 1990s marketing campaign for the clothing company Benetton. Like the 90s, the current moment is charged with fear, loss, and rage due to homophobia, racism, drug wars, extreme poverty and wealth, and the restriction of reproductive rights to name a few social issues. The appropriation of this title for Paige’s exhibition is a call for humankind to come together and create solutions. According to Paige, “If we allow ourselves to understand everything’s connected, completely, you shouldn’t try to break the chain. Everything is connected and I’m connected to everything, so I’m appreciative of that knowledge, it’s all humanity.”

Robert Earl Paige (b.1937, Chicago) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and educator actively making work that challenges the distinction between fine art and craft by combining elements from African aesthetic traditions, modernist painting, Bauhaus architecture, and vernacular invention in his objects, collages, and fabrics.