photographers

Artist of the Week

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Elizabeth Catlett’s artwork and life painted a noble and human way of life for African American and Mexican working-class women. Her work tells accurate stories of their lives.

She was born in the United States in Washington, DC, in 1915. Raised by her mother because her father died shortly after she was born, Catlett spent summers with her grandparents in North Carolina.

She graduated from Howard University with a degree in Art and the University of Iowa with a Masters in Fine Arts degree. In 1940, she got a job as the department chair of Art at Dillard in New Orleans.

The first female professor of sculpture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, School of Fine Arts San Carlos, in Mexico City, Catlett taught there until she retired in 1975.

Her work is collected in America, Mexico and the Czech Republic.

In addition to supporting marginalized communities in protests marches, Catlett was also commissioned to create monuments for the Ralph Ellison, Louis Armstrong and at Howard University.  Social justice was a matter that filled her work with images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Black Power and other African American figures.

Artist of the Week

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General Moses is a drawing by Charles White of Harriet Tubman. She sits on these rocks like she is on a throne, giving counsel to many. The first time I saw this I remember thinking wow, what a powerful woman this was. This is an ink drawing created by Charles White in 1965.

Mother and Child Sorrow by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller in 1962 and is a bronze cast sculpture. I love that a woman was creating art that spoke to the abuse African Americans received during that time in history. Cheers to women who tell our stories by any means.

Artist of the Week

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When I first saw this work by Warrick I thought WOW.

In Memory of Mary Turner: As a Silent Protest Against Mob Violence

This sculpture, depicting a woman cradling an infant in her arms and leaning away from grasping hands and flames at the base, was created in response to the vicious lynching of a young woman named Mary Turner in 1918. Mary Turner’s husband had been lynched and she publicly denounced his murder. In response, a mob of hundreds captured her, hung her upside down from a tree, and brutally killed her and her unborn child.

Artist Meta Warrick Fuller’s sculpture is one of the first created by an African American specifically depicting the brutality of lynch mobs.

Museum of African American History, Boston & Nantucket

Artist of the Week

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African American stories were not told during her time. At least not the truth. She became known for using her work to address social injustice towards African Americans during her lifetime. Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller was a poet, painter and sculptor at the turn of the 20th Century. Born in Philadelphia in 1877, her parents were able to send her to a good school which helped develop her artistic ability.  Her parents were part of the African American middle class with successful businesses.

Fuller’s work was shown in high school projects at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. She received a scholarship to a university and after graduation, she moved to Paris, France to study with Raphael Collin. Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first African American painter to gain international fame, was also a family friend.

In 1907 Fuller won a gold medal for her work in an exhibition at the 1907 Jamestown Tercentennial. She created 150 dioramas depicting the progress African Americans had made from when slaves landed in Jamestown to the beginning of 1900.