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Michael A. Cummings | |
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| Born | Michael Arthur Cummings November 28, 1945 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Education | Empire College |
| Known for | Painting, textile arts, collage |
| Website | michaelcummings |
Michael Cummings (born November 28, 1945) is an American artist and quilter who lives in Harlem, New York.
Cummings grew up in Los Angeles, California, and earned a BA in American Art History at Empire College. He moved to New York in the early 1970s to take a position with the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. [1] He worked with event planner Karin Bacon. Cummings spent his early artistic career as a part-time collage (with Romare Bearden as a mentor) and paint artist. [1]
After a work project to create a cloth banner for an exhibition in 1973, Cummings discovered his love for working with fabric and taught himself to quilt by studying the works of local quilters and how-to quilt magazines and books. [2]
Cummings was in a pilot program that created the Studio in a School program in the 1970s. Philanthropist Agnes Gund funded the program and visited the artists many times.[ citation needed ]
Cummings also worked at the New York State Council on the Arts for many years before retiring.[ citation needed ]
Cummings quilts in the narrative, story-telling tradition and is one of a few nationally known male quiltmakers. His work often features bright, colorful African themes and African American historical themes. Major quilt series include the "African Jazz" series (1990), the "Haitian Mermaid" series (1996), and the "Josephine Baker" series (2000).
The U.S. State Department has posted several of Cummings' quilts in its embassies (Rwanda and Mali) through its Art in Embassies program. [3] Brands such as Absolut Vodka and HBO have commissioned his work, [1] and his work is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, [4] among others. Whoopi Goldberg and Bill Cosby collect Cummings' quilts.
Cummings is a founding member of the Women of Color Quilters Network, founded by Carolyn L. Mazloomi. [5]
African-American art is a broad term describing visual art created by African Americans. The range of art they have created, and are continuing to create, over more than two centuries is as varied as the artists themselves. Some have drawn on cultural traditions in Africa, and other parts of the world, for inspiration. Others have found inspiration in traditional African-American plastic art forms, including basket weaving, pottery, quilting, woodcarving and painting, all of which are sometimes classified as "handicrafts" or "folk art".
The National Heritage Fellowship is a lifetime honor presented to master folk and traditional artists by the National Endowment for the Arts. Similar to Japan's Living National Treasure award, the Fellowship is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. It is a one-time only award and fellows must be living citizens or permanent residents of the United States. Each year, fellowships are presented to between nine and fifteen artists or groups at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.
The quilts of Gee's Bend are quilts created by a group of women and their ancestors who live or have lived in the isolated African-American hamlet of Gee's Bend, Alabama along the Alabama River. The quilts of Gee's Bend are among the most important African-American visual and cultural contributions to the history of art within the United States. Arlonzia Pettway, Annie Mae Young and Mary Lee Bendolph are among some of the most notable quilters from Gee's Bend. Many of the residents in the community can trace their ancestry back to enslaved people from the Pettway Plantation. Arlonzia Pettway can recall her grandmother's stories of her ancestors, specifically of Dinah Miller, who was brought to the United States by slave ship in 1859.
Christopher Myers is an American interdisciplinary artist, author and illustrator of children's books, and playwright. His wide-ranging practice—including tapestries, sculpture, stained glass lightboxes, theater and writing—is rooted in storytelling and artmaking as modes of transformation and cultural exchange. He explores contemporary hybrid cultures and identities resulting from histories of migration, globalization and colonization. Critics have noted his work's fluid movement between disciplines, image and language, sociopolitical research and mythology, and diverse materials. Shana Nys Dambrot of LA Weekly wrote, "Ideas about authorship, collaboration, cross-cultural pollination, intergenerational storytelling, mythology, literature and the oral histories of displaced communities all converge in his literal and metaphorical patchwork tableaux … [his] sharp, emotional and sometimes dark parables express it all in bright, jubilant patterns and saturated colors."
Michael Francis James is an American artist, educator, author, and lecturer. He is best known as a leader of the art quilt movement that began in the 1970s. He currently lives and maintains a studio in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Carolyn L. Mazloomi is an American curator, quilter, author, art historian, and aerospace engineer. She is a strong advocate for presenting and documenting African-American-made quilts. Her own quilts are designed to tell complex stories around African-American heritage and contemporary experiences.
Roland L. Freeman was an American photographer and award-winning documenter of Southern folk culture and African-American quilters. He was the president of The Group for Cultural Documentation based in Washington, D.C.
Women of Color Quilters Network (WCQN) is a national organization dedicated to preserving African American quiltmaking.
Souls Grown Deep Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to documenting, preserving, and promoting the work of leading contemporary African American artists from the Southeastern United States. Its mission is to include their contributions in the canon of American art history through acquisitions from its collection by major museums, as well as through exhibitions, programs, and publications. The foundation derives its name from a 1921 poem by Langston Hughes (1902–1967) titled "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," the last line of which is "My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Martha Neill Upton was a watercolorist, sculptor and studio quilt artist. Her quilted tapestries helped quilts become seen as fine art, rather than craft work, during the early 1970s. Her quilts were shown in the first major museum exhibition of non-traditional quilts, The New American Quilt at New York's Museum of Arts and Design, then called the Museum of Contemporary Craft, in 1976.
Tina Williams Brewer is an American quilting artist, recognized for story quilts about African American history. Brewer was born in Huntington, West Virginia. She graduated from the Columbus College of Art and Design. Brewer started in interior design and pottery, but moved to quilting in 1986, feeling it was more compatible with motherhood. She is currently based in Pittsburgh, PA and has served on the boards of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Filmmakers/Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.
Mary Lee Bendolph is an American quilt maker of the Gee's Bend Collective from Gee's Bend (Boykin), Alabama. Her work has been influential on subsequent quilters and artists and her quilts have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the country. Bendolph uses fabric from used clothing for quilting in appreciation of the "love and spirit" with old cloth. Bendolph has spent her life in Gee's Bend and has had work featured in the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minnesota.
Gwendolyn (Gwen) Ann Magee was an African-American fiber artist. Learning to quilt in the middle of her life, Magee quickly became known in the world of fiber art for her abstract and narrative quilts depicting the African-American experience. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Mississippi Museum of Art, the Museum of Mississippi History, the Michigan State University Museum, and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, and has been exhibited internationally.
Cecelia Tapplette Pedescleaux, also known as Cely, is an African-American quilter of traditional and art quilts, inspired by historians, other African-American quilters, and quilt designs used during the Underground Railroad to communicate messages to slaves seeking freedom. Her quilts have been shown in China, France, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, and in other locations in the United States. A solo show of 75 of her quilts were shown at the Le Musée de Free People of Color in New Orleans (2013–2014).
NedRa Bonds is an American quilter, activist, and retired teacher, born and raised in the historic Quindaro neighborhood in Kansas City, Kansas. Bonds creates quilts and mixed media fiber dolls using fabric, beads, and symbolism to explore issues dealing with human rights, race, women, politics, and the environment. She is best known for her Quindaro Quilt, a quilt measuring 4 by 6 feet, detailing the important history of the Quindaro neighborhood and its role as part of the National Underground Railroad System of Historic Trails. As a community activist and educator, Bonds advocates for legislation, taught workshops locally and internationally, and attended the Earth Summit Conference on Environment and Development of the United Nations as a delegate in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. Bonds is a practicing artist and retired teacher in Kansas City, Kansas. Her recent projects include her Common Threads quilt, commissioned by the Kansas City Chiefs for their Arrowhead Arts Collection, the Wak’ó Mujeres Phụ nữ Women Mural collaboration, sponsored by the Charlotte Street Foundation's Rocket Grant Program, in Lawrence, Kansas, and her recent cancer project. Bonds was appointed to the Kansas Arts Commission by Kansas Governor Joan Finney in 1992.
Bisa Butler is an American fiber artist who has created a new genre of quilting that has transformed the medium. Although quilting has long been considered a craft, her interdisciplinary methods -- which create quilts that look like paintings -- have catapulted quilting into the field of fine art. She is known for her vibrant, quilted portraits celebrating Black life, portraying both everyday people and notable historical figures. Her works now count among the permanent collections at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Art Institute of Chicago, Pérez Art Museum Miami and about a dozen other art museums nationwide. She has also exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Epcot Center, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and many other venues. In 2020, she was commissioned to quilt cover images for Time magazine, including the "Person of the Year" issue and its "100 Women of the Year" issue. With a multi-year wait list for private commissions, one of Butler's quilts sold at auction in 2021 for $75,000 USD.
Lucinda Toomer was an American artist who worked in the African-American tradition of quiltmaking. Her quilts are known for their bold compositions, visual rhythm, and improvisational style. They were at the forefront of a surge of national recognition for the art form during the 1990s.
Yvonne Wells is an African-American folk artist and quilter from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She is best known for her self-taught style and her story quilts depicting scenes from the Bible and the Civil Rights Movement. Her work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and at the International Quilt Museum.
Carolyn Crump is an American quilting artist whose work focuses on African American culture. Her work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Michigan State University African American Quilt Collection.
Sharon Kerry-Harlan is an African-American artist active in Hollywood, Florida and Wauwatosa, Wisconsin who is known for her textile art. She was born in Miami, Florida in 1951. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Marquette University and studied at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. She went on to work at Marquette University as an Academic Coordinator and to teach textile courses at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee as an adjunct professor. From July to August 2019, Kerry-Harlan had a solo exhibition at the James Watrous Gallery at the Overture Center for the Arts. Throughout August 2019, her work was on display in the AndStill We Rise: Race Culture and Visual Conversations exhibit at the Mariposa Museum & World Cultural Center in Oak Bluff, Massachusetts. In early 2021, Kerry-Harlan participated in the Textile Center and Women of Color Quilters Network’s juried exhibit Racism: In the Face of Hate We Resist. Later that year, Kerry-Harlan's work was displayed in the Museum of Wisconsin Art's Claiming Space Exhibition. In 2022, her work, Portrait of Resilience, from the Flag Series, was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of the Renwick Gallery's 50th Anniversary Campaign in 2022. That same year, Kerry-Harlan's work was displayed in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art's exhibit Ain’t I A Woman? in celebration of the 2022 Wisconsin Triennial. She also had work displayed in the 2022 Uncovering Black History: Quilts from the Collection of Carolyn Mazloomi exhibition at the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska.
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