Please enjoy this short exhibition of prints and drawings by
Elizabeth Catlett.
Elizabeth Catlett was born in 1915, in Washington, D.C. She
was an advocate for social change in the U.S. and Mexico until she passed away in
2012 at age 96. Her prints are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum,
in New York, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
1. Elizabeth Catlett
"Fiesta"
color screenprint
2. Elizabeth Catlett
I have given the world my songs,
from "I am
the Negro Woman" series, 1946-1947
Linocut
3. Elizabeth Catlett
Prissy. 1979
Lithograph on cream wove paper
4.Elizabeth Catlett
Untitled (Freedom). 1998
From the Freedom or Slavery: The Paul Robeson Portfolio
Margaret Taylor Burroughs
was born on November 1, 1917 in Saint Rose, Louisiana.
She took earned a B.E. in
Art Education and an M.A., in 1948 from the Art Institute of Chicago. Margaret
was a printmaker who carved and printed linoleum block prints centered around
images of African American Culture.
Margaret and her husband,
Charles founded the Ebony Museum of Chicago, later called the of
African American History in 1961.
In 1975 President Gerald
Ford awarded her thePresident’s
Humanitarian Award.She died in Chicago
on November 21, 2010.
“…Kay Brown (1932-2012) was an African American artist and one of the founders of the Where We At Black women artists’ collective in New York City. She was also a member of the Weusi Artist Collective, based in Harlem during the 1960s and 1970s….”
A Swahili word meaning blackness, “Weusi” is also the name of a distinguished collective of artists established in Harlem during the 1960’s against the Black Arts Movement. This video is a sampling from interviews with 17 Weusi artists still working in New York City.
“ … In early 1971, Kay Brown, Dindga McCannon, and Faith Ringgold gathered a group of black women at McCannon’s Brooklyn home to discuss their common frustrations in trying to build their careers as artists… Out of this initial gathering came one of the first exhibitions of professional black women artists: “Where We At”—Black Women Artists, 1971. Adopting the show’s title as its name, the collective began meeting at members’ homes and studios, building support systems for making their work while assisting each other with childcare and other domestic labor. Where We At recognized the power of collectivity—empowering black women by creating a network to help them attain their professional goals as artists…”
Printmaking/Art History. Black Printmakers/Artists: Emma Amos.
In August of 1963, The March on Washington was held to advocate for the civil rights of African Americans. Martin Luther King Jr delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech, calling for an end to racism.
The art collective, The Spiral Group formed as a result of the march.
“…Spiral was a New York–based collective of African-American artists that came together in the 1960s to discuss their relationship to the civil rights movement and the shifting landscape of American art, culture and politics…”
An artist in the group who I particularly admire is Emma Amos.
Emma Amos (1937 – 2020) was invited in 1963, by her professor, “…Hale Woodruff to become a member of Spiral, a group of black artists that included Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, and Charles Alston. She was the group’s youngest and only female member…”
Prints and paintings by Emma Amos are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum of Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Brooklyn Museum. Emma Amos died on May 21 at her home in Bedford, N.H. She was 83. In 2021, a retrospective of the artist’s work will open in her home state, at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens.
Stars and Stripes,
monotype with George Shivery photo transfer, 1995
About Whiteness (Red)
oil and laser transfer on paper. 1995
Measuring, Measuring
Acrylic on linen canvas, Kente fragment, batiked hand swatches, African strip woven borders, and laser-transfer photographs, 1995
Mississippi Wagon, 1937,
print, 1992
My Mothers, My Sisters,
lithograph, handmade paper collage, African fabric border, 1992
Contemporary African American artists continue the work of Spiral:
Black Art In America
SPIRAL NOW 55 Years Later: New Artists, Familiar Struggle
SAMELLA
LEWIS, born in New Orleans in 1924 is rightfully considered one of the most influential
artists/art historians in the United States.
“… As a
young artist, she was drawn to subjects as diverse as police brutality against
African Americans, comic books, and characters from her older sister's romance
novels…”
She “…became
the first African American to receive doctorates in Fine Art and Art
History.Dr. Lewis attended Dillard
University, Hampton Institute, and Ohio State University. She taught as a
full-time professor at Morgan State University, Florida A&M, State
University New York Plattsburgh, California State Dominguez, California State
Long Beach, and Scripps College…”
Dr.
Lewis“…was an active member of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, making her a target
of government officials who accused her of being a Communist and members of the
Ku Klux Klan who shot out windows of her home. Undaunted, she founded a chapter
of the NAACP in Plattsburgh.
‘Lewis
has changed the landscape of Art History and has become an influential and
highly respected voice that has also mentored and bolstered the careers of many
African American artists. She is the recipient of a myriad of awards and
distinctions and has exhibited in many important galleries and museums.”
“I fight against segregation, discrimination,
racism, brutality and depravity because these things deny people their rights
as human beings.” -- Samella Lewis. (Credit: Daily Bulletin)
House
of Shango
Lithograph.
1992
“The
title of this piece is an unmistakable harkening to African roots. Shango is a
religious practice with origins in Yoruba (Nigerian) belief, deifying a god of
thunder by the same name…”
Printmaking in the time of
COVID-19. Small Exhibitions: Who are the people COVID – 19 is Killing in Your
Neighborhood?
Revisiting Navajo Nation
Printmaking.
Featured Artist: Nani
Chacon
Time to check back in with
the Navajo Nation, the "Dineh" or "the People" to see how
their battle with COVID – 19 is progressing.
A brief review of the
Navajo Nation:
In 1864,
"Kit" Carson and the United States federal government enacted a plan
of ethnic cleansing and forced the relocation of the Navajo from their
ancestral homelands to Fort Summer, a 40-square-mile reservation in eastern New
Mexico. Years later the U.S.-Navajo Treaty of 1868 allowed the Navajo to return
to only a small portion of their original homeland.I’m betting your history books didn’t inform
you of the forced “Long Walk of the Navajo.”
Largest of all U.S.
Indian reservations, covers 27,413 sq. miles
Only twelve Health
Service facilities to serve over 350,000 citizens.
The facilities have
only 28 ventilators.
In Mid May when the
Athraigh Studio first featured Navajo printmakers the Navajo had suffered at
least 3,392 cases of COVID – 19 and 119 known deaths.
“Cases on Navajo Nation
peaked in May, with an average of 104 new cases per day. By July, that number
dropped by half to about 48 new cases reported each day. In all, about 9,000 of
the roughly 172,000 Navajo members living on and around the reservation have
tested positive and more than 450 have died from the virus…. Local officials
say Navajo Nation’s success in flattening the curve has been largely due to
three things: widespread adherence to mask-wearing and social distancing, one
of the strictest stay-at-home curfews in the country and an aggressive testing
regime.”
“The coronavirus was so
devastating on Navajo Nation in part, experts say, because of severely lacking
infrastructure on the reservation. An estimated 30 percent of homes don’t have
running water…”
The Navajo have shovel
ready plans to improve their infastructure and hope to use some of the $714
million in federal aid they received from the CARES Act. A deadline mandates
the money be spent by Dec. 30 or the tribes risk have to send it back.
“Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez…wants to spend
the money on expanding access to running water and electricity and providing
broadband access and more affordable housing on the reservation — in effect
addressing the infrastructure gaps that experts said contributed to COVID-19’s
deadliness there…”https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/navajo-nation-fears-second-covid-19-wave/index.html
Spending the money by the
end of the year is close to impossible, “… because most tribal land is held
in trust, and technically owned by the federal government, development on many
tribal lands is fraught with complications..”
The Navajo asked the Trump administration in June to waive some federal
regulations so the tribe could fast-track development projects. It’s now August
and they’ve heard nothing.
U.S. Rep. Tom O’Halleran,
D-Ariz., introduced a bipartisan bill to extend the spending deadline for
tribal governments to 2022.
So, the Navajo continue to
fight COVID, fight the Trump administration to build infrastructure on a small
portion of their original homeland and face the annual summer drought.
So, if we simply focus on
water… Digging new water lines and building water towers on the reservation is
difficult due to the federal and tribal regulations. Please consider supporting
DigDeep.
“DigDeep”, a human rights
nonprofit serves the 2.2 million+ Americans without the sinks, bathtubs or
toilets has established The Navajo Water Project.
“Agua es Vida” signed
and numbered serigraph Print.
“honoring the
historical and traditional connections we have with have with water, with the
water that lives in us, is the water of centuries” Nanibah.
