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 Sculptor is a faint southern constellation between two others — Grus and Cetus, to be exact. Conversely, of my own assessment, the Sculptor is a pellucid southern entity on a par with greats suchlike Augusta Savage, Elizabeth Catlett, John Wilson — and he is none other than Alfred Amadu Conteh. Langston Hughes knows rivers, but I know sculptors. He is bald, bearded, big-boned, and Black-Black. He speaks brilliance through a deep, but quickened, down-south dialect which declares that he is born straight outta a place called Fort Valley, in Georgia , and its motto is “Where Caring is a Way of Life.” Conteh cares. His caring spirit is a guiding principle when it comes to the context of his works.