Artist Making Art

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Nov 24, 2024

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Noah Campbell 12/1/23 Artist Making Art Glenn Ligon Ligon is a concept artist born in New York in 1960. Throughout his career, Ligon has created bodies of work that critically expand on the traditions of modern painting and conceptual art, all while pursuing an insightful investigation of American history, literature, and culture. His most well-known works are text-based paintings that he has been creating since the late 1980s and that are based on the speeches and writings of significant 20th-century intellectuals like Richard Pryor, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and Jean Genet. My favorite piece by Ligon is “Untitled (I Do Not Always Feel Colored).” The phrases that Glenn Ligon used repeatedly throughout the essay are taken from Zora Neale Hurston's 1928 essay, "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," which explores the notion that skin tone is a social construct. Betye Saar Born on July 30, 1926, African American artist Betye Irene Saar is well-known for her assemblage-based artwork. Saar is a skilled printer as well as a visual storyteller. Saar participated in the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s, which challenged racial and gender stereotypes.(Source: ) Saar is well known for her artwork that criticizes American prejudice toward Black people. Her work is regarded as extremely political because, throughout her career, she contested stereotypes about African Americans. My favorite piece by Saar is titled “Beyond Midnight (Magie Noire).” It appears to be a decorated photo frame with stars, astronomical structures, gems, a woman’s right hand and other surrounding items with a window in the center which contains an African woman with a galactic background, although I’m unsure who this is supposed to be. This piece is special to me because I can imagine the work that must’ve gone into it, especially the creation of the right hand. Yinka Shonibare Born in 1962 in London, UK, Yinka Shonibare CBE RA completed his Fine Art studies at Byam Shaw School of Art in 1989 and earned his MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London in 1991. His multidisciplinary work challenges the legitimacy of modern national and cultural identities in the face of globalization by quoting Western art history and literature. Through an analysis of race, class, and the formation of cultural identity, his works make commentary on the complex interconnections between Africa and Europe, as well as their distinct political and economic background. My favorite piece is “Modern Magic.” It reminds me of a Native Tongues album cover, with its very Afrocentric look and style like much of his other work. I actually have a few artifacts and paintings in my home that are similar to Shonibare’s work, but that's probably just because it’s African art..

Kara Walker Kara Walker is a New York-based artist best known for her honest exploration of sexuality, gender, race, and violence through silhouetted figures that have been shown in many international exhibits. Walker, who was born in 1969 in Stockton, California, moved to Atlanta, Georgia, when he was 13 years old. She completed her studies at the Rhode Island School of Design (MFA, 1994) and Atlanta College of Art (BFA, 1991). She is the winner of numerous honors, including the United States Artists, Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship in 2008 and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award in 1997. My favorite piece by them is “A Subtlety” an installation piece by American artist Kara Walker from 2014, is also referred to as the Marvelous Sugar Baby and subtitled "a Homage to the Unpaid and Overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the Cane Fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant." A Subtlety featured fifteen more sculptures in addition to its centerpiece, a white sculpture of a lady with African features in the form of a sphinx. These fifteen "attendants" to the sphinx were larger Chinese replicas of modern blackamoors. Kehinde Wiley American artist Kehinde Wiley was born in Los Angeles in 1977. His most well-known portraits include individuals of color in the classic settings of Old Master paintings. Through the use of the visual rhetoric of the heroic, the powerful, the majestic, and the sublime, Wiley celebrates Black and Brown people that he has encountered throughout the world in his work, which brings art history and contemporary culture face to face. Wiley challenges and reorients art-historical narratives through his painting, sculpture, and video works, bringing to light difficult subjects that many would rather stay hidden. My favorite piece by them is titled “We Love Piece.” It’s an oil painting created in 2006. There’s just something very joyful about the painting, seeing a group of black folks smiling and just having a good time. Kerry James Marshall Birmingham, Alabama, was the birthplace of Kerry James Marshall in 1955. His paintings, installations, and public projects all have African American culture as their subject matter, which is deeply ingrained in his childhood geography. His family relocated to the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1963, shortly before the racial riots broke out. Marshall completed his education at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1999 and a bachelor's degree in fine arts in 1978. Otis professor Charles White, an African American social realist painter, had a profound effect on him as a student. My favorite piece by them is “Voyager,” released 1992. They also have an equally interesting piece titled “Great America.” Both of these art pieces seems to be sharing the same/similar message, and as abstract as it seems, I really enjoy it. Kenturah Davis

Born in 1984, Kenturah Davis is a Los Angeles-based artist who also works in Accra, Ghana. Her work veers between different aspects of design and portraiture. She investigates the essential role that language plays in forming our perceptions of ourselves and the world around us, starting with text. This takes many different forms, such as paintings, fabrics, sculptures, and live performances. Institutional exhibitions in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa have featured her work. Davis received her MFA from Yale University School of Art after earning her BA from Occidental College. LA Metro hired Davis to design large-scale, site-specific pieces that would be permanently affixed to the new Crenshaw/LAX rail line. In New Haven, Connecticut, Davis served as the first artist fellow at NXTHVN. Her art is quite psychedelic to my eyes and personally my favorite is “The Bodily Effect of Color (Sam), 2021.” This is an oil painting made by oil paint applied to rubber stamp letters, with colored pencil ground and a debossed grid on igarashi kozo paper. Jarrell Gibbs Jerrell Gibbs (born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1988) challenges master narratives and their association with a subdued visual history in order to challenge false stereotypes of Black men. Gibbs' paintings are defiant acts that challenge prevailing preconceptions about the visual arts. He depicts the Black male body with ornaments, like flowers, and places them in serene, alone moments. These motions serve to undermine the inaccurate visual portrayal of trauma, violence, and suffering. My favorite painting by them is “Abrazamos A Nuestra Hijas.” I really like the ones that are portraits of someone or seem like a painted version of a real photo. The painting is Acrylic, oil stick on canvas, and features a man in glasses holding what you can assume to be his child or someone relating to him while also holding flowers. Jenifer Packer Born in 1984, Jennifer Packer is a modern American painter and teacher who works out of New York City. Political portraits, domestic scenes, and still lifes depicting Black American experiences today are among Packer's subjects. She uses close observation to paint portraits of her contemporaries, funeral bouquets, and other subjects. Her technique is characterized by a limited color palette and free, improvised brushstrokes, especially when working with oil paint. The one that looks the most impressive to me is “The Body Has Memory.” Painted in 2018 with Oil on canvas, this painting stands out to me because it overall just feels like a mood. The eerie look of the guy sitting down on what I can only assume is a bed and the vague, but very clear facial expression just makes it very cool to me. Richard Howard Hunt Richard Hunt is an American sculptor who was born on September 12, 1935. He rose to prominence in the latter half of the 20th century as "the foremost African-American abstract

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sculptor and artist of public sculpture." As the son of slaves transported from West Africa via Savannah's harbor, Hunt attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1950s. Whilst there, he was awarded several prizes for his efforts. He had the first-ever retrospective of any African American artist at the Museum of Modern Art in 1971. More than any other sculptor, Hunt has completed over 160 public sculpture commissions in 24 states with notable settings. Hunt’s most interesting sculpture to me is “Hero Construction.” Sculpted in 1958, it’s a rather simple piece, being made when Hunt had just graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The artwork is made out of various objects that the artist found on the street and in junkyards, including rusty pipes, metal fragments, and car pieces. Hunt fused these components together into an abstract yet identifiable form by using a flame like a paintbrush.

Artist Making Art

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