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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".
Faith Ringgold is an American painter, painting on different materials including fabric, a published author, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, and intersectional activist, perhaps best known for her narrative quilts.
Miriam Nathan-Roberts was a textile artist who specialized in Studio Art Quilting. Her work was centered on abstract "illusions of three dimensions on flat or semi-flat surfaces." Nathan-Roberts received many awards at the Quilt National over the years, including Best in Show, the People's Choice Award (1985), and the Juror's Award of Merit (2013); she served as Juror in 2005.
Harriet Powers was an American folk artist and quilter. Born into slavery in rural northeast Georgia, she married young and had a large family. After the American Civil War and emancipation, she and her husband became landowners by the 1880s, but lost their land due to financial problems.
Deborah Willis is a contemporary African-American artist, photographer, curator of photography, photographic historian, author, and educator. Among her awards and honors, she is a 2000 MacArthur Fellow. She is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts of New York University.
Sue Reno is a fiber artist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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.
Dindga McCannon is an African-American artist, fiber artist, muralist, teacher author and illustrator. She co-founded the collective Where We At, Black Women Artists in 1971.
Joyce J. Scott is an African-American artist, sculptor, quilter, performance artist, installation artist, print-maker, lecturer and educator. Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016, and a Smithsonian Visionary Artist in 2019, Scott is best known for her figurative sculptures and jewelry using free form, off-loom beadweaving techniques, similar to a peyote stitch. Each piece is often constructed using thousands of glass seed beads or pony beads, and sometimes other found objects or materials such as glass, quilting and leather. In 2018, she was hailed for working in new medium — a mixture of soil, clay, straw, and cement — for a sculpture meant to disintegrate and return to the earth. Scott is influenced by a variety of diverse cultures, including Native American and African traditions, Mexican, Czech, and Russian beadwork, illustration and comic books, and pop culture.
Nancy Morrison Crow is an American art quilter and fiber artist. She is one of the leading figures in the development of the art quilting movement of the 1970s and 1980s, and is also known for her development of certain techniques to allow more spontaneity and expression.
Wini "Akissi" McQueen is an American quilter based in Macon, Georgia. Her artistic production consists of hand-dyed accessories and narrative quilts. Her techniques for her well-known quilts include an image transferring process. In her work, she tackles issues of race, class, society, and women. Her quilts have featured in many museum exhibitions, including the Museum of African American Folk Art, the Taft Museum, the Bernice Steinbam Gallery, and the William College Art Museum. In 2020, her quilts were featured in a retrospective dedicated to her textile art at the Museum of Arts & Sciences in Macon, GA.
Alma Lesch was an American fiber artist known for her fiber portraits. She was "the undisputed grande dame of Kentucky textile arts." A historic marker notes her achievements in Shepherdsville, Kentucky where Lesch lived and had her studio. Lesch's quilt, Bathshebas Bedspread, was included in the Objects: USA exhibit in 1969, which was organized by S.C. Johnson and Son.
Jane Dunnewold is an American textile artist and author. She was previously the president of the Surface Design Association.
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.
vanessa german is an American sculptor, painter, writer, activist, performer, and poet based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Alisha B. Wormsley is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer. Her work is about collective memory and the synchronicity of time, specifically through the stories of women of color. She states her work is "the future, and the past, and the present, simultaneously."
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.
Irene Williams (1920–2015) was an American artist. She is associated with the Gee's Bend quilting collective, although she made her quilts "in solitude" and "uninfluenced." Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Frist Art Museum, and is included in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the National Gallery of Art.
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.
References
- 1 2 3 Shaw, Kurt (17 June 2009). "Artist Uses Quilts to Convey Stories and Build Cultural Connections". Pittsburgh Tribune Review. Retrieved 30 March 2016– via EBSCO.
- ↑ "Exhibit Tells Stories Through Quilts". The Beaver County Times. 11 September 2014. Retrieved 30 March 2016– via EBSCO.
- 1 2 Shaw, Kurt (7 September 2014). "Homewood Artist's 'Fragments' Looks at Cultures in Our World". Pittsburgh Tribune Review. Retrieved 30 March 2016– via EBSCO.
- 1 2 3 4 Bullard, Andrea (11 June 2009). "Fabric artist Tina Williams receives one of the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts' rare Lifetime Achievement Awards". Pittsburgh City Paper. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
- 1 2 3 4 5 "Tina Williams Brewer » The Artist". tinawilliamsbrewer.com. Retrieved 2017-12-05.
- 1 2 3 4 Thomas, Mary (1 July 2009). "Award Covers Quilt Artist Tina Williams Brewer Distinguished Career". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
- ↑ "Tina Williams Brewer". U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 7 March 2016.
- ↑ "Women of Excellence are the Living Legacy". New Pittsburgh Courier. 10 September 2008. Archived from the original on 6 December 2017. Retrieved 30 March 2016– via HighBeam Research.
- ↑ Johnson, Denise C. (17 June 2009). "Guided by Ancestors, Admired by All". New Pittsburgh Courier. Archived from the original on 6 December 2017. Retrieved 30 March 2016– via HighBeam Research.
- ↑ "Security Blanket: The Story Quilts of Tina Williams Brewer | The Glassblock". The Glassblock. 2016-06-07. Retrieved 2017-12-05.
