Clarissa Sligh

Last updated

Clarissa Sligh
Born1939 (1939)
Alma mater Hampton University
Howard University
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Occupation(s)Artist, photographer, book artist, essayist, lecturer
Website ClarissaSligh.com

Clarissa T. Sligh (born 1939) [1] is an African-American book artist and photographer based in Asheville, North Carolina. At age 15, she was the lead plaintiff in a school desegregation case in Virginia. In 1988, she became a co-founder of Coast-to-Coast: A Women of Color National Artists' Project, which focused on promoting works completed by women of color.

Contents

Early life and education

Sligh was born in Washington, D.C. She grew up in a large working-class family and "went to segregated schools in a predominantly white Virginia county." [2] In 1955, at the age of 15, she was the lead plaintiff in a school desegregation case in Virginia (Thompson v County School Board of Arlington County). [3] [4] [5]

Sligh attended the traditionally African-American Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia, where she earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1961. In 1972, she received a bachelor's degree in Visual Arts from Howard University in Washington DC, and in 1973, an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1999, she received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Visual Arts from Howard University.

Career

Before working as an artist, Sligh had a job at NASA where she worked in the crewed space flight program. [6] In 1987, Sligh was able to leave her day job to focus on working as an artist. [7]

Her work has been exhibited at the Jewish Museum in New York City, [8] and at the National African American Museum Project, at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, the forerunner to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.[ citation needed ]

Her work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, [9] the National Gallery of Art, [1] the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), [10] the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, [11]

Field of work

Sligh considers herself foremost a storyteller. [7] Her photographs and artist books center on politics, family life, questions of identity, and personal experience. [12] Her work also engages more broadly in creative explorations of history, social justice, and transformation. [7] In her work, Sligh combines photographs and other images with text; as she added more text, she moved from creating prints to book works. [7]

According to Carla Williams, Sligh's work reflects on our perceptions of normality and our roles in different frameworks such as family, society, gender and ethnic groups. As Williams says, "In school readers from her childhood, Sligh discovered the model from which to confront the realities of her own life." [13] Sligh has created books reflecting directly on her experience as the lead plaintiff in a 1955 Virginia school desegregation case (Thompson v County School Board of Arlington County): an essay, The Plaintiff Speaks (2004), and an artist book, It Wasn’t Little Rock (2004 and 2005). [7]

Sligh has also created artist books that engage with her own experiences as a Black child reading books, including Reading Dick & Jane with Me (1989), a narrative about learning to read as a Black child, and My Mother, Walt Whitman and Me (2019), focusing on a copy of Leaves of Grass that her mother found in the trash and brought home. [7]

Coast-to-Coast National Women Artists of Color Projects

In 1988, Sligh co-founded the Coast-to-Coast National Women Artists of Color Project with Faith Ringgold and Margaret Gallegos. [14] From 1988 to 1996, this organization exhibited the works of African American women across the United States. [15]

According to this source, Sligh also worked with other organizations that display art made by African American females. The organizations included the National Women's Caucus for Art (1985-1994), The Artist Federal Credit Union, New York (1986-1987), Printed Matter (1992-1996), and the artists advisory board of the Womens Studio Workshop (2004-2007). [16]

In 1990, Sligh was one of three organizers of the exhibit "Coast to Coast: A Women of Color National Artists' Book Project" held January 14 – February 2, 1990, at the Flossie Martin Gallery, and later at the Eubie Blake Center and the Artemesia Gallery. Faith Ringgold wrote the catalog introduction titled "History of Coast to Coast." More than 100 Women of Color artists were included. The catalog included brief artist statements and photos of the artists' books, including works by: Emma Amos (painter), Beverly Buchanan, Elizabeth Catlett, Dolores Cruz, Dorothy Holden, Martha Jackson Jarvis, Young-Im Kim, Viola Leak, Howardena Pindell, Faith Ringgold, Adrian Piper, Joyce J. Scott, Freida High Tesfagiorgis, Denise Ward-Brown, Bisa Washington, and Deborah Willis. [17]

Awards

Works and publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sally Mann</span> American photographer (born 1951)

Sally Mann is an American photographer known for making large format black and white photographs of people and places in her immediate surroundings: her children, husband, and rural landscapes, as well as self-portraits.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lois Mailou Jones</span> American artist and educator (1905–1998)

Lois Mailou Jones (1905–1998) was an artist and educator. Her work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Muscarelle Museum of Art, and The Phillips Collection. She is often associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Faith Ringgold</span> American artist (1930–2024)

Faith Ringgold was an American painter, author, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, and intersectional activist, perhaps best known for her narrative quilts.

Michele Faith Wallace is a black feminist author, cultural critic, and daughter of artist Faith Ringgold. She is best known for her 1979 book Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman. Wallace's writings on literature, art, film, and popular culture have been widely published and have made her a leader of African-American intellectuals. She is a Professor of English at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alma Thomas</span> American painter (1891–1978)

Alma Woodsey Thomas was an African-American artist and teacher who lived and worked in Washington, D.C., and is now recognized as a major American painter of the 20th century. Thomas is best known for the "exuberant", colorful, abstract paintings that she created after her retirement from a 35-year career teaching art at Washington's Shaw Junior High School.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nike Davies-Okundaye</span> Nigerian batik and textile designer (born 1951)

Chief Nike Davies-Okundaye, also known as Nike Okundaye, Nike Twins Seven Seven and Nike Olaniyi, is a Nigerian Yoruba and adire textile designer. She is best known as an artist for her cloth work and embroidery pieces.

Betty Blayton was an American activist, advocate, artist, arts administrator and educator, and lecturer. As an artist, Blayton was an illustrator, painter, printmaker, and sculptor. She is best known for her works often described as "spiritual abstractions". Blayton was a founding member of the Studio Museum in Harlem and board secretary, co-founder and executive director of Harlem Children's Art Carnival (CAC), and a co-founder of Harlem Textile Works. She was also an advisor, consultant and board member to a variety of other arts and community-based service organizations and programs. Her abstract methods created a space for the viewer to insert themselves into the piece, allowing for self reflection, a central aspect of Blayton's work.

"Where We At" Black Women Artists, Inc. (WWA) was a collective of Black women artists affiliated with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It included artists such as Dindga McCannon, Kay Brown, Faith Ringgold, Carol Blank, Jerri Crooks, Charlotte Kâ (Richardson), and Gylbert Coker. Where We At was formed in the spring of 1971, in the wake of an exhibition of the same name organized by 14 Black women artists at the Acts of Art Gallery in Greenwich Village. Themes such as the unity of the Black family, Black female independence and embodiment, Black male-female relationships, contemporary social conditions, and African traditions were central to the work of the WWA artists. The group was intended to serve as a source of empowerment for African-American women, providing a means for them to control their self-representation and to explore issues of Black women's sensibility and aesthetics. Like AfriCobra, a Chicago-based Black Arts group, the WWA was active in fostering art within the African-American community and used it as a tool of awareness and liberation. The group organized workshops in schools, jails and prisons, hospitals, and cultural centers, as well as art classes for youth in their communities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linda Lee Alter</span> American visual artist (born 1939)

Linda Lee Alter is an American visual artist who is primarily known as an art collector and philanthropist. In 2010 Alter donated five hundred artworks by American female artists to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Louise Odes Neaderland is an American photographer, printmaker, book artist and founder of the International Society of Copier Artists (I.S.C.A.) and the I.S.C.A. Quarterly, a collaborative mail, book art, and copy art publication. She was the organizer of ISCAGRAPHICS, a traveling exhibition of xerographic art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Candida Alvarez</span> American painter

Candida Alvarez is an American artist and professor, known for her paintings and drawings.

Margo Humphrey is an American printmaker, illustrator and art teacher. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Stanford after earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the California College of Arts and Crafts in printmaking. She has traveled in Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, and Europe and has taught in Fiji, Nigeria, Uganda, and the University of Maryland. As a printmaker, she is known for her "bold, expressive use of color and freedom of form", creating works that are "engaging, exuberant and alive." Her work is considered to be "in the forefront of contemporary printmaking."

Virginia Maksymowicz is an American artist whose sculptural installations incorporate a variety of media. She lives in Philadelphia, PA and is married to artist-photographer, Blaise Tobia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colette Fu</span> American book artist, photographer, and paper engineer

Colette Fu is an American photographer, book artist and paper engineer known for creating pop-up books, especially on a large scale, from her photographs.

Susan E. King is an American artist, educator, and writer who is best known for her artist's books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janet Henry</span> American artist

Janet Henry is a visual artist based in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women Artists Visibility Event</span>

The Women's Artists Visibility Event (W.A.V.E.) also known as Let MOMA Know, was a demonstration held on June 14, 1984, to protest the lack of women artists represented in The Museum of Modern Art's re-opening exhibition "An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture." The exhibition, which included 165 artists, had 14 women among them.

Carole Marie Byard was an American visual artist, illustrator, and photographer. She was an award-winning illustrator of children's books, and the recipient of a Caldecott Honor, as well as multiple Coretta Scott King Awards.

Nadema Ivania Agard, who also uses the name Winyan Luta Red Woman, is an American visual artist, educator, illustrator, poet, storyteller, museum professional and an activist for Indigenous rights. Agard also works as a consultant on repatriation, multicultural arts, and Native American arts and cultures. Additionally, Agard owns and directs an art production and consulting enterprise, Red Earth Studio.

Ann Graves Tanksley is an American artist. Her mediums are representational oils, watercolor and printmaking. One of her most noteworthy bodies of work is a collection based on the writings of African-American novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. The Hurston exhibition is a two hundred plus piece collection of monotypes and paintings. It toured the United States on and off from 1991 through 2010.

References

  1. Collins, Lisa Gail (2002). The Art of History: African American Women Artists Engage the Past. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. pp.  112. ISBN   0813530210.
  2. Art Talk with Clarissa Sligh, National Endowment for the Arts, March 6, 2012.
  3. 1 2 3 A Thousand Reasons Why Archived 2014-08-11 at the Wayback Machine , Verve Magazine, December 2, 2013.
  4. "Thompson v County School Board of Arlington Virginia". Justia US Law. Retrieved March 16, 2018.
  5. "Clarissa Sligh". www.clarissasligh.com. Archived from the original on March 16, 2016. Retrieved April 11, 2017.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Clarissa Sligh: Living A Life, the Personal and the Political". Women's Studio Workshop. June 6, 2019. Retrieved August 11, 2020.
  7. "A List of Every Woman Artist Exhibited at the Jewish Museum". The Jewish Museum. March 7, 2019. Retrieved March 20, 2023.
  8. "Clarissa Sligh". Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved March 20, 2023.
  9. "Reading Dick and Jane With Me". NMWA Library & Research Center. Retrieved March 19, 2023.
  10. "Clarissa Sligh". Walker Art Center. Retrieved March 20, 2023.
  11. Neumaier, Diane, ed. (1995). Reframings: New American Feminist Photographies. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. pp.  89–90. ISBN   1566393329.
  12. Williams, Carla (1995). "Reading Deeper: The Legacy of Dick and Jane in the Work of Clarissa Sligh". Image. 38 (3/4): 3.
  13. "Donor Spotlight: Clarissa Sligh". wsworkshop.org. March 26, 2009. Archived from the original on April 16, 2017. Retrieved March 25, 2015.
  14. "Works by Women to go on Display in Wooster", Toledo Blade, August 21, 1991.
  15. "Sligh, Clarissa". Benezit Dictionary of Artists. 2018. doi:10.1093/benz/9780199773787.013.4001115. ISBN   9780199899913 . Retrieved March 14, 2019.
  16. Coast to coast: a Women of Color National Artists' Book Project. Flossie Martin Gallery. 1990. OCLC   29033208 . Retrieved November 24, 2016.
  17. 1 2 "Clarissa Sligh – Women's Studio Workshop". Women's Studio Workshop. Retrieved November 24, 2016.
  18. "National Endowment for the Arts Annual Report" (PDF). 1988: 189. Retrieved November 24, 2016.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  19. "Artists' Books | Leeway Foundation". Leeway Foundation: 17. 2006. Retrieved November 24, 2016.
  20. "ART REVIEW; Pictures in Children's Books, From Cherubs to Divided Faces", New York Times, August 18, 1995