Artist Ya La’ford in front of one of his works.
Ya La’ford
Abstract artist Ya La’ford is in high demand.
Her commissions – including sculptures, installations and gallery exhibitions – mean she is fully booked for the next four years.
La’ford, who is based in the artistic community of St. Petersburg, Florida, revealed the names of his current and former clients, including Nike, McLaren Racing, the Orlando Magic basketball team and the ski brand Rossignol during a phone call with CNBC. She has also worked for companies like the NFL, creating commemorative gifts for team owners during the 2021 Super Bowl.
“I create site-specific installations of these bold geometric paintings that explore these themes of transformation, transcendence and interconnectivity,” she told CNBC by phone.
“My fascination (is) how geometric patterns can create an illusion of depth and movement,” she said. La’ford works in different mediums including painting, sculpture, installations and video.
She is also one of the favorite celebrities with famous name commissions, but nondisclosure agreements prevent her from speaking publicly about many of them. A photo of La’ford with Janet Jackson is among the images on her Instagram account, captioned “Birthday love.”
“American Roots” (2021), an installation at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, by Ya La’ford.
The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art | Ya La’ford
“The water finds its own level,” she added: La’ford holds an MFA from the Art Institute of Boston and a Juris Doctor from the Levin College of Law in University of Florida.
One person she can speak for about her work is author and activist Maya Angelou, who died in 2014. La’ford made a quilted tapestry with words from Angelou’s poetry. “She asked me to do a piece… when I was in Houston, and it was such a tangle of words, poetry… and the power of love and light,” said La’ford.
“My biggest lesson I learned from Maya is that everyone you meet should feel better about themselves and their goals. People rarely remember what you said, but they always remember this that you made them feel,” La’ford said. CNBC by email, recalling a quote from the author.
Artist Ya La’ford is working on a piece titled “Unloaded” (2017) at the Orlando Museum of Art.
Orlando Art Museum | Ya La’ford
The use of geometry is a “universal language,” she said, adding that it “redefines ancient civilization, connects the present space we live in and really thinks about what will happen in our future “. Travel influenced La’ford and she mentions the Great Wall of China, Rome’s Colosseum and Egyptian temples as well as the people of Palenque, Colombia, who were officially freed from slavery in 1713, as monuments and cultures who interest him.
“I would like to think that these pieces have enriching powers, or healing powers like a stone or a talisman,” La’ford said of his work, adding that many customers meditate alongside his art in their House.
“This idea that we can manipulate our space, our perspective, our point of view, our idea of engaging with humanity and creating an immersive experience that we can all share together, I think that’s the magic of building brands,” she added.
Computer-generated image of a sculpture honoring the Courageous 12, a group of black police officers who sued the city of St. Petersburg in 1965 for discrimination, designed by artist Ya La’ford.
Ya La’ford
Among his public art projects is a sculpture honoring the Courageous 12, a group of black police officers who sued the American city of St. Petersburg in 1965 for discrimination, winning police rights on par with white police officers.
The concrete, stainless steel and bronze sculpture will follow La’ford’s geometric lines and will be built on the site of the former police headquarters. “This sculpture will pay tribute to the courage and resilience of these pioneering officers,” she said, with the piece due to go on display early next year.
In addition to creating public art and working for corporations, La’ford has held artist residencies in Ogden, Utah, and Jacksonville, Florida, and exhibited at the Tampa Museum of Fine Arts and at the Asia Contemporary Art Show. His work is also part of the permanent collection of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
La’ford’s talent was evident early: as a child, she painted on the walls of her home in the Bronx, New York. “My mother was a third grade teacher and her walls became my canvas from a young age. She let me create these epic installations. At the time, I thought I was just building a safe space for third graders to can come in and I feel welcome, without realizing that I’m…laying the foundation (for a career),” she said.
Mark Rothko’s painting “Black On Maroon” from 1958 (right) at the Tate Modern gallery in London. The work was defaced in 2012 and restored in 2014, and Ya La’ford said it was one of his favorite works of art.
Rob Stothard | Getty Images
Art is in his blood. La’ford’s grandfather is John Dunkley, considered one of Jamaica’s most important artists. Dunkley died in 1947, and a 2019 exhibition of 45 of his works at the American Folk Art Museum was called a “revelation” by the New York Times. The museum described Dunkley’s work as “landscapes defined by their distinctive dark palette and psychologically suggestive underpinnings,” on its website.
“As I grew up, each work left me with hidden puzzles that I believe can only be solved and understood with the paint that I use to create my own world,” La’ford wrote of the Dunkley’s work on the Pérez Art Museum of Miami website. .
Abstract expressionist artists such as Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly and James Turrell are those with whom La’ford describes himself as being “in conversation”. One of her favorite Rothko works, “Black on Maroon” (1959), makes her cry, she says, “because I think there’s this moment that art can capture, that resonates through space of time”.
No matter who she works for, La’ford says, she seeks to explore the human condition. “We then discover the tranquility and the excitement… of the positive and the negative: how do they live together?” she says.
cnbc
