Students who have toured the current exhibit in the campus gallery may wonder if the art pieces are truly part of one collection.
With a show that includes objects such as shacks, sculptures, quilts, garments, and gourds made from materials such as wood, clay, beads, sequins, photographs, and Indonesian pebbles, onlookers could run into some difficulty pinning down one idea that brings the exhibition together.
But the community members who attended the opening reception of the exhibit, Color: Ten African-American Artists, believed it was precisely the dynamism and variety among the items on display that unified the pieces and the approaches of the men and women responsible for creating the collection meant to explore and celebrate racial identity.
“[The show] is very diverse and very colorful,” said sophomore Nathan Schrader, who helped arrange the exhibit. “I know what it took to put it all together and it’s definitely a wide variety of things. It was like putting together a puzzle piece.”
Color: Ten African-American Artists is a traveling exhibit that showcases the works of Sharif Bey, Tina Brewer, Beverly Buchanan, Nick Cave, June Gaddy, Robert Peppers, Cheryl Riley, Joyce Scott, Lydia Thompson, and Michele Turner. The exhibit opened Monday night, January 14, 2008 in the Eric Dean Gallery of the Fine Arts Center. The collection was organized by The Society for Contemporary Craft (SCC) in Pittsburgh, Pennyslvannia and arrangements for its arrival to Wabash were initiated by Professor of Art Doug Calisch.
This 38-piece display celebrates African-American identity through the diverse perspectives, craftsmanship, and interests of both emerging and established artists residing throughout the country.
Whether it’s Lydia Thompson’s sculptures that focus on the human or Robert Peppers’ mixed media representations of faith, adversity, and empowerment, the different representations of identity can be interpreted as sending a universal message about different journeys to self-discovery.
“I think it’s great that everyone’s pointing out the diversity and the differences and everything that’s going on with this because that’s sort of the point of the exhibit,” said Gallery Director Kristi Helmkamp. “To have all of these different media and textures be part of it because it’s all dealing with this issue of identity, particularly race and identity. So it’s showing how different things can be used to communicate the same idea, [how] there’s no one clear cut path. Every student here can come in and get a sense of that, that you don’t have to be one specific way to be a certain person.”
The works and focuses of Sharif Bey and June Gaddy are examples of the different paths the artists use to explore identity.
North Carolina resident Sharif Bey’s large-scale bead necklaces explore African-American identity through the representation of ethnic heritage and tradition as personified by bead jewelry in contrast to contemporary pop culture’s use of diamonds or “bling” as status symbols.
While Bey uses traditional elements to connect to the present, New York native June Gaddy employs traditional processes to connect to her family’s southern past.
Gaddy integrates traditional sewing processes, fabrics, and old photographs to create dresses that not only capture specific time periods but incorporate stories, proverbs, and histories to explore African-Americans’ place in American society over time.
Though Bey and Gaddy represent only two of ten perspectives on display, the diversity of ideas and materials employed to express their perspectives was not lost on the audience attending the reception.
“I love the mixed media collection and the range of textures and artwork material that they use,” said Malcolm X Institute Director Timothy Lake. “I love it - the gourds, the fabric, the beads. I think art has a way of telling stories that textual literature can’t do. It gets me into the richness of my African-American heritage. It even stretches back to the African motifs that are still alive. So it’s emblematic of the African retentions that are still present in African-American culture.”
Professor of Art Gregory Huebner agreed.
“There’s some really fantastic craftwork here,” Huebner said. “They all obviously have a different take on African-American culture, society, traditions of Africa, and its influences.”