The International Review of African American Art, Vol. 29 No. 3 (2019)

Description

Editor
Vanessa D. Thaxton–Ward, Ph.D.

Guest Editor
Michael D. Harris, Ph.D.

Assistant Editor
Deanna Brooks

Executive Publisher
William R. Harvey, Ed.D.

So many amazing and inventive artists were working as educators. Most knew each other and many worked at HBCUs like Hampton University, Spelman College, Central State University and Howard University. Nelson Stevens would come to meetings from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Jon Lockard was a fixture at the University of Michigan. Most were activists through their art and their students kept the connection and tradition alive. Margaret Burroughs and Samella Lewis had helped found the National Conference of Artists (NCA) in the 1950s because, for them, art was not about individuality, though unique creativity has always been recognized and celebrated. I remember my joy upon first encountering Lewis’s book, with Ruth Waddy, Black Artists on Art in the early 1970s and David Driskell’s Two Centuries of Black American Art, 1976, exhibition and publication.

Eventually, I came to learn about Camille Billops and her Artists and Influence series of publications and interviews in New York and the marvelous archive she and her husband, Jim Hatch, amassed and have now located at the Rose Library at Emory University in Atlanta to share with researchers and scholars as a legacy.

Perhaps we can mark 1970 when Jeff Donaldson organized CONFABA in Chicago at Northwestern University as a turn toward this flowering of artists of African descent blossoming as a cultural community acknowledging their being part of something large. Or maybe it can be traced from SPIRAL in 1963, when Romare Bearden and Charles Alston and Hale Woodruff and Emma Amos, among others, came together to make a statement in support of the Civil Rights struggle. The point is that many of these artists did not profit financially or receive the embrace of the Art World yet they persisted. They worked in the vineyards to help produce the wine we drink today with the success of Hank Willis Thomas and Mickalene Thomas and Kerry James Marshall and Carrie Mae Weems and Alison Saar. They saw themselves as Black and many endured blues songs. But they kept working. And teaching. And giving.

We wish to honor them here.

—Excerpt from “Seeing Black and Blues: Part 2” by Michael D. Harris, Ph.D.

Feature Articles and Contributors:

“Seeing Black and Blues: Part 2”, Michael D. Harris, Ph.D.

“Preserving the Will to Adorn: African American Stained Glass Art Traditions”, Melanee C. Harvey, Ph.D.

“We Wanted In; We Wanted Change: The Legacy of the Incomparable Camille Billops”, Pellom McDaniels III, Ph.D.

“The Creative Interior: An Interview with Camille Billops”,
Michael D. Harris, Ph.D.

“John Scott’s Urban Delights”, Margaret Rose Vendryes, Ph.D.

“John Scott’s Spirit House in New Orleans”, Michael D. Harris, Ph.D.

“Beyond the Gates of Janus: Bing Davis and the Black Argonauts”,
Moyo Okediji, Ph.D.

Bibliographic Details

Title:                                       The International Review of African American Art

Publisher:                            The Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia

Publication Date:              2019

Binding:                                 Pictorial Softcover

Book Condition:                Excellent

Book Type:                           Quarterly Magazine

Shipping Terms:

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