Artist Bisa Butler creates colorful quilts that have a narrative twist. Identifying herself as “essentially a portrait artist who uses fibers and quilting as a medium,” she crafts pictures of people using the same conceptual approaches that a painter would a canvas. The results are striking. While we might picture a quilt as displaying geometric designs, there’s a beautiful…
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Painter Elizabeth Colomba Is Giving Art’s Hidden Figures Their Close-Up | Vogue
A rainy morning in Paris in 1863. On the wet cobblestone street, a handsome black woman in a colorful head wrap, carrying an umbrella, is looking straight out from the canvas. I’m in the studio of Elizabeth Colomba, a French-born, New York–based artist, and this is the painting she’s just finished. Slightly behind the central…
Read MoreHow Jacob Lawrence Painted a Radical History of the American Struggle | Smithsonian Magazine
The Peabody Essex Museum is reuniting a series of paintings that explore the hidden stories of the nation’s formative years Between 1949 and 1954, Jacob Lawrence made countless trips from his home in Brooklyn to the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library, where he scoured history books, letters, military reports and other documents…
Read MoreThe Impressive Profile of French Film Storyboard Artist and Painter Elizabeth Colomba | Shadow and Act
Elizabeth Colomba in her studio via NEW YORKER I’m not sure how many of you are aware of film storyboard artist Elizabeth Colomba; I sure wasn’t, and in case you weren’t either, I wanted to profile and share some of her fascinating work. What’s worth noting is that Colomba has done extensive storyboard and visual…
Read MorePamela J. Joyner’s ‘Mission-Driven Collection’ of African-American Art Looks to Reframe History | ARTnews
The following is one of several extended looks into figures and institutions selected for “The Deciders,” a list of art-world figures pointing the way forward developed by ARTnews and special guest editor Kasseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean. See the full list in the Winter 2020 issue of the magazine and online here. Pamela Joyner has some advice for collectors who…
Read MoreWhy Alfred Conteh Is The Dopest Artist You Never Heard Of | BLACKSTEW News (Medium)
Point ‘Em Out is an editorial series where Ida Harris explores the latest and the greatest in Black art. Thanks to modern-day technology, we get to be virtual consumers of yesterday’s icons and today’s most innovative Black artwork, and — if we’re lucky — the Black geniuses who produce them (BLACKSTEW) — According to astronomy, the…
Read MoreThe History of Spiritual Jazz: Hear a Transcendent 12-Hour Mix Featuring John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock & More | Open Culture
Karen Chernick, Open Culture Jazz has inspired a great many things, and a great many things have inspired jazz, and more than a few of the music’s masters have found their aspiration by looking — or listening — to the divine. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they subscribe to traditional religion. As befits this naturally eclectic music that grew from…
Read MoreThe Story of Charles Ethan Porter, an African American Still-Life Painter | Hyperallergic
Karen Chernick, Hyperallergic Porter’s struggle, and the ensuing invisibility of his work, are as much a part of his story as his masterful paintings that dignify humble everyday objects. At the end of his life, Charles Ethan Porter’s walls were covered with a career’s worth of paintings portraying apples, cherries, and corn, but he tragically…
Read MoreNick Cave: Using materials that range from twigs to crystals to rainbow-colored hair, the artist makes sculptures that, for all their beauty, are visceral and necessary critiques of racial injustice. | The New York Times
Megan O’Grady, The New York Times THE INAUGURATION OF Nick Cave’s Facility, a new multidisciplinary art space on Chicago’s Northwest Side, has the feeling of a family affair. In April, inside the yellow-brick industrial building, the classical vocalist Brenda Wimberly and the keyboardist Justin Dillard give a special performance for a group that includes local friends, curators and…
Read MoreLegacy Russell Appointed Associate Curator at Studio Museum of Harlem | The Network Journal
Aziz Gueye Adetimirin, The Network Journal Golden, chief curator at the Studio Museum of Harlem, today announced the appointment of Legacy Russell to serve as assistant curator of exhibitions at the Studio Museum. Her experience is in organizing exhibitions and events, writing for diverse audiences from popular to academic, and, most recently, serving as European…
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