The Art of Style

When Kabuya Pamela Bowens-Saffo looks at any object — a piece of clothing or a work of art — she does so from a slightly different vantage point than most. She demands something from a scarf or the objet d’art; she “interacts” with it, asking it to explain itself and its meaning. It’s in her nature.

Bowens-Saffo is a printmaker and internationally recognized artist. Currently the arts administrator and chief curator of Tallahassee’s Anderson Brickler Gallery, her work draws upon a scholarly background that has taken her to New York, Miami, Rome, Venice and, for over 15 years, into the world of academia as a professor at both FSU and FAMU.

Given her career as a visual artist, her “relationship” with the scarf in question, her primary accessory, makes sense.

“For me, the colors are telling me something,” said Bowens-Saffo of the scarf. “Yellow, for instance. Yellow, for me, says ‘Solidarity.’ It is reflective, and messages can go back and forth.”

She unwraps a multicolored piece of silk by Faith Ringold from around her neck and smooths the kaleidoscopic material. “But I also love black.

Photo by Alicia Osborne

“Black is anonymous,” she explained. “It is a sacred place, a place one enters carefully. It is a platform for other things as well.”

Often preferring casual tunics and black tights, Bowens-Saffo sometimes adds gold jewelry or even colorful, whimsical knee socks for fun. But the safety of black seems a staging ground and refuge.

Bowens-Saffo’s home is filled with art, both her own and that of other printmakers, such as Ken Falana and Leon Hicks. It doubles as a studio, where she produces handcrafted prints, intaglios and collagraphs on her own press, using metal engraving styluses, corrosive acids and chemicals. The resulting images contain joyful and tender messages that often refer to African American life.

Bowens-Saffo wears her favorite beret — vintage Jordon Marsh-Boston — and a silk yellow scarf from the Hirshhorn Museum gift shop and exhibition Infinity Mirror Rooms by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. In addition to her work at the gallery, Bowens-Saffo is working on a community research project exploring Munree Cemetery’s cultural history and lost and found burial grounds of African Americans who lived and worked on Weluanee Plantation. Photo by Alicia Osborne

Experts and scholars recognized her artistic talents early. She graduated from Howard University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and earned her MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. She received an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and worked as a printmaker in New York before being recruited as an associate professor at Florida State University and later a visiting professor at Florida A&M University.

She recently returned from an artist-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley. And now, she collaborates with Dr. Celeste Hart at the Anderson Brickler Gallery, one of her most passionately loved jobs.

“Developing a gallery with a patron who is knowledgeable and committed has been a joy of my life.”

She’s also working on the Welaunee Memorial Museums Project, which seeks to construct museums on two different cemetery sites in town.

During her master’s studies in printmaking at the Pratt Institute, Bowens-Saffo was a master printer at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in New York. She printed a series of woodcuts by renowned artist Hale Woodruff for the Metropolitan Museum collection in New York. The two smaller woodcuts pictured are by Woodruff. Photo by Alicia Osborne

“So you see, art is really my style,” said Bowens-Saffo. “It’s the message it sends from my body. I don’t think of color as something you have to ‘match,’ rather, it’s the meaning it sends,” she laughed. “But I do love a nice beret!”

She touches an elegant black satin beret she is fond of. “I even like the little tab at the top. It’s like giving people a salute as I go by!” 

What’s in a Name?

Bowens-Saffo said she took on the name “Kabuya” during her tenure at Howard University. She explained, “It is a Swahili word meaning, ‘a person who gives good cheer.’”