Carol Ann Carter’s three-month stay in Nigeria in 1984 was the first great influence on her art, she says, but not in ways she’d expected. She already knew that her prints of geometrical designs unintentionally resembled African textiles, and while in Nigeria she visited a number of museums. But she was most entranced by the “street wanderers” of Lagos. “They traveled with their shelter,” she says, “sometimes under umbrellas, with piles of fabric. They would wear rags that were fragments of traditional Nigerian textiles. I might see someone who had rigged a ladderlike structure on his head with some of his belongings hanging from it, or someone who would carry a ladder with possessions on his neck. They were exquisite assemblages.” Observing the wanderers from the safety of a car, she began to question the comparative orderliness of her art. When she returned to the States, she started tearing her prints into pieces, dyeing them different colors, and stitching, gluing, and taping them together. Later she worked with torn fabrics, collaging them in layers and adding paint, marks, and objects.
