This exhibition is called "On Their Own Terms" and it features 37 artists.
And they work from the 1850s to the present.
This title came out of conversations that I had with Garbo Hearne. She's a local
gallery owner and she approached me about showing some of the historic
artists in the exhibition, Duncanson, Porter, Bannister and Tanner.
These were all free black men working in the late 1800s.
And they were making art despite
the fact that they really weren't encouraged to be professional artists.
And they were making art on their own terms and that's why I picked that title
for the exhibition.
Some of the names that you'll see on the walls... there is
the artist Amy Sherald and Kehinde Wiley. Those artists had a national spotlight
last year because they were the artists picked to do the portraits of President
Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. And so people are coming to the gallery because
they recognize those names and they're interested in seeing work done by these
nationally prominent artists
So we're standing in the installation by Delita Martin called "The Dinner Table."
And Delita had this idea about doing drawings on found plates. And the first
drawing that she wanted to do was of her grandmother. And she said then I'm gonna
do my sisters and my aunts. And Delita said that started to make her think, "well
what is family?" And for Delita, while it was still blood relatives, her family
seemed to extend beyond that.
I started thinking about and I started making a
list of women that meant something to me. And some of them I knew for years some
of them I knew for 10 minutes. I actually would go through Facebook, social media
and I would look for images where you were just being yourself. And so I pulled
all of those images and you know coupled with the images that are that I took and
I started creating these portraits. And so I was like how many images am I going
to create? And 300 came to mind. And that's what I went with.
There are a lot of powerful artists in that show. And all of the women in my work are very
powerful and they're doing things on their own terms they're doing things you
know they're living life they're living their best lives.
In the exhibition with
the Delita's work I have hanging next to her plate pieces a Whitfield Lavelle
piece that's painted on a round wooden coin.
I have Elizabeth Catlett just
outside of her installation so we can start to look at how those pieces relate
to each other.
I put Charles Porter and Marjorie Williams Smith next to one another.
Porter was doing still lives of roses in
the 1800s. Marjorie William Smith in 2012 are doing
these elegant silverpoint drawings of trumpet vines and roses.
I think the power of the figure... we're figures... we're human. And we look at other
figures and they tell us stories about ourselves. And I think that's the power
and the work in the exhibition. And I think that's what people are taking away from it.