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Willie Cole was born in 1955 in Somerville, New Jersey. He received his bachelors of fine arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York. He completed various artist residencies and internships in Seattle, San Francisco, and throughout the New York metropolitan area. He participated in many group exhibitions in the 1980s and had his first solo exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1989.

Ordinary to Extraordinary

• What do you see?

This work is made with the burns or "scorches" of different irons. Cole’s mother and grandmother were housekeepers and often asked him to fix their broken irons. When he moved into his first studio in 1980, he had as many as fifteen to twenty of his family’s broken irons with him. "But," Cole says, "I was a painter then…and I threw those irons away. The iron and scorch pieces started five or six years later, with my seeing an iron on the street for many days and noticing it had a face on it that looked like a West African mask….  I brought it here [his studio] and photographed it and put the picture on the wall. And for about a year I was always finding irons. It was almost like that first iron had made me an iron savior." ¹

• Does this information change the way you see this work? Why or why not?

In the Making
Through experimentation Cole discovered that irons, everyday household appliances, left interesting burn-prints on paper and canvas that he called "scorches." All of the irons he uses have been used by other people—he does not use brand new irons.

• What do you think about his process of "scorching" in comparison to drawing or painting images?

Cole said, "The objects have a memory and a history of their own. If you have a slave, or just a domestic worker, people working for little money, their objects have a memory of that experience, of that labor." ²

• Do you think it is significant that Cole only works with irons that have been used by other people?  Why or why not?
  
  
• Do you think household objects can have character and history? Why or why not?

Sending a Message
Cole is very interested in thinking about African Americans’ roles in American society and the influence of African culture. Cole noticed that different brands of irons, such as General Electric and Sunbeam, left different burn marks or scorches, much like the distinct marks of different African tribal masks and shields. The words we see underneath each scorch are indeed the brand name of the iron. In addition, the scorches reminded him of ritual African scarring, which, apart from being decorative, in many cases also indicates the family and status of a person.

Cole speaks about the relationship he sees between the irons and African culture, "I think that when one culture is dominated by another culture, the energy or powers or gods of the previous culture hide in vehicles if the new cultures.... I think the spirit of Shango (the Yoruba god of thunder and lightning) is a force hidden in the iron because of the fire, and the power of Ogun—his element is iron—is also hidden in these objects."³

• What do you think of the connections Cole makes between African culture and his artwork?
  
  
• In your opinion, do you think that Cole has transformed these everyday objects, irons, into symbols of something more powerful?  Why or why not?

1. Willie Cole, "Every Action Is Political and Spiritual: an Interview with Willie Cole," interview by Jacqueline Brody, Artnet.com, February 20, 1997.
   
   
2. David Moos, "The Sculpture of Willie Cole," in Perspectives: Willie Cole (Birmingham: Birmingham Museum of Art, 1998).
   
   
3. Willie Cole, interview by Elizabeth A. Brown, in Social Studies: 4 + 4 Young Americans (Oberlin, Ohio: Allen Memorial Art Museum, 1990), 19.