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Fallen Through The Cracks

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Robert Hamilton Blackburn

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Robert Hamilton Blackburn

Fallen Through The Cracks – Robert Hamilton Blackburn

Robert Hamilton Blackburn

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Robert Hamilton Blackburn was born on December 12, 1920, in Summit, New Jersey, but grew up in Harlem, where his family moved when he was seven years old. He was an artist, teacher, and master printmaker. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he worked on the literary magazine The Magpie as a writer and artist alongside his counterpart James Baldwin.

Blackburn studied lithography and other printmaking techniques with Riva Helfond, who taught him how to operate the press. He worked at the Uptown Community Workshop, a gathering place for black artists and writers which allowed him to meet artists such as Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, and Jacob Lawrence. Blackburn attended the Art Students League and won a School Arts League Award and an Art Students League Working Scholarship for further study. 

Blackburn working with Robert Rauschenberg, 1962. Image courtesy of the Rauscheburg Foundation.
Robert Blackburn teaching in a workshop. Courtesy of the Estate of Robert Hamilton Blackburn. ©

In 1947, Robert Blackburn established the Printmaking Workshop, an 8,000-square-foot (740 m2) loft at 114 West 17th Street in New York City. The workshop’s program included classes, an open studio area, and print shops where artists could experiment with different techniques. In 1971, Blackburn established a board of trustees and incorporated the Printmaking Workshop as a nonprofit. 

The Workshop has amassed a comprehensive collection of artists’ prints and by 1997, over 2,500 of these works had been deposited with the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Smaller selections of prints have been placed with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and El Museo Del Barrio in New York City.

In 1987, he received the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Award and received a MacArthur fellowship in 1992. The Printmaking Workshop received a Governor’s Art Award from the New York State Council on the Arts in 1988. Robert Blackburn died on April 21, 2003 (aged 82) in New York City, New York.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Ruth Gilliam Waddy

PhotoCredit: John Wilson White Studio Phocasso [email protected] www.phocasso.com San Francisco, Ca 94110 415-264-6969

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Ruth Gilliam Waddy

Fallen Through The Cracks – Ruth Gilliam Waddy

Ruth Gilliam Waddy

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Ruth Gilliam Waddy was born Willanna Ruth Gilliam on January 7, 1909, in Lincoln, Nebraska, and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was an American artist, printmaker, activist, and editor who was known for her practice of linocut printmaking and was in her fifties when she turned to art as a career. Her highly contracted prints featured stories about African-American visibility. 

She attended the University of Minnesota with hopes of teaching but had to leave school to help support her family during the Great Depression. She moved with her young daughter to Los Angeles to find work as a riveter at Douglas Aircraft Corporation. After the war, she worked at a county hospital, where one of her co-workers was artist Noah Purifoy.

Ruth Gilliam Waddy, Untitled Series B, 1969. Estate of Ruth Gilliam Waddy. Credit: John Wilson White, Studio Phocasso.
Ruth Gilliam Waddy, The Fence, 1969. Estate of Ruth Gilliam Waddy. Credit: John Wilson White, Studio Phocasso.

In 1966, her work was part of “The Negro in American Art,” a traveling exhibition funded by the California Arts Commission, and took on a cross-country bus trip to collect artworks for Prints by American Negro Artists (1967). With artist Samella Lewis, she edited Black Artists on Art (1969 and 1971). Waddy and Lewis are considered two of the “founding mothers” of the Black Arts Movement in California.

She founded an organization of artists called Art West Associated which extended the groundbreaking work of co-op galleries and helped promote the work of Black artists in the 60s and 70s in Los Angeles. She was one of twelve African-American artists honored by the Los Angeles Bicentennial in 1981, received an honorary doctorate from Otis Art Institute in 1987, and received a lifetime achievement award from the Women’s Caucus for Art in 2001. Her papers are at the Amistad Research Center, Tulane University. Ruth G. Waddy died on May 24, 2003, at age 94, in San Francisco, California.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: William Henry Johnson

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: William Henry Johnson

Fallen Through The Cracks – William Henry Johnson

William Henry Johnson

#FallenThroughTheCracks – William Henry Johnson was born on March 18, 1901, in Florence, South Carolina. He was a painter who worked with a variety of media, often just using the materials that were available on hand to create his work. His works emphasized vivid and vibrant colors alongside simplistic figures. His depictions of African-American culture were pulled from his upbringing in the rural South. He immersed himself in African-American culture and traditions, from realism to expressionism to constructing images that were represented by their folk art plainness. He moved to New York City at the age of 17 saving enough money to pay for classes at the National Academy of Design. In the fall of 1927, he moved to Paris, where he learned modernism, and had his first solo exhibition at the Students and Artists Club. He moved back to the U.S. in 1929 and fellow artists encouraged him to enter his work at the Harmon Foundation, and as a result, Johnson received the Harmon gold medal in fine arts.

William Henry Johnson, Training For War, Courtesy of the Estate of William Henry Johnson ©
William Henry Johnson, Riffs and Relations , Courtesy of the Estate of William Henry Johnson ©

Johnson ultimately found work as a teacher at the Harlem Community Art Center where he and other teachers instructed about 600 students per week meeting important Harlem artists such as Gwendolyn Knight. William Henry Johnson no longer painted after 1955 and died on April 13, 1970, in Central Islip, NY. The William H. Johnson Foundation for the Arts was established in 2001 in honor of his 100th birthday and has awarded the William H. Johnson Prize annually to an early career African American artist. In 2012, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp in Johnson’s honor, recognizing him as one of the nation’s foremost African-American artists and a major figure in 20th-century American art.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Nancy Elizabeth Prophet

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Nancy Elizabeth Prophet

Fallen Through The Cracks – Nancy Elizabeth Prophet

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Nancy Elizabeth Prophet was born on March 19, 1890, in Warwick, Rhode Island. She was an artist of African-American and Native-American ancestry, known specifically for her sculpture. In 1914, at the age of 24, Prophet enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. She was the only African American student and graduate amongst a predominantly white female school population. After graduation, She attempted to find work as a portrait painter full-time but was unsuccessful. She painted portraits of residents to earn money to travel to France and in 1922, Prophet moved to Paris to study sculpture at L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts. She left the school because she believed she could teach herself faster than working under a mentor. One of her most prominent works, Negro Head, is a larger-than-life-size wooden sculpture. W.E.B. DuBois and Countee Cullen helped Prophet submit her work to exhibitions in the United States while she lived overseas and she won the Harmon Prize for Best Sculpture in 1929.

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Courtesy of the Estate of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet ©
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Courtesy of the Estate of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet ©

In 1934, Prophet began teaching students at both #SpelmanCollege and #AtlantaUniversity, expanding the curriculum to include modeling and the history of art and architecture. She had hopes of encouraging the creative minds of youth, the encouragement she was not presented with during her early years as she often welcomed students to her own home. In 1935 and 1937, she participated in the #WhitneyMuseum Sculpture Biennials and the Sculpture International exhibition at the #PhiladelphiaMuseumofArt in 1940. Her sculpture, #Congolaise, became one of the first works by an African American acquired by the Whitney Museum. Nancy Elizabeth Prophet died on December 13, 1960, in Providence, Rhode Island at 70.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Merton Simpson

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Merton Simpson

Fallen Through The Cracks – Merton Simpson

Merton Simpson

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Merton Simpson was born on September 20, 1928, in Charleston, South Carolina. He was an abstract expressionist painter and African and tribal art collector and dealer. Growing up in a segregated South, Simpson was not allowed to take art classes at the city-run Gibbes Gallery where his mentor artist William Melton Halsey worked. In 1949, his wife Corrie, and former director of the Charleston Museum, Laura Bragg, sponsored his first solo art show. They held two separate receptions; “one for whites and one for whites who didn’t mind coming to a reception with blacks.”

Simpson was the first African American to receive a prestigious five-year fellowship from the Charleston Scientific and Cultural Education fund and left South Carolina for New York City after finishing high school. He took classes at New York University (NYU) during the day and at Cooper Union at night also working at a framing shop where well-known artists would frequent. He credited the frame shop for giving him his “real education”.

Merton Simpson, Maternal Orchestration, From the Estate of Merton Simpson ©
Merton Simpson Collection, From the Estate of Merton Simpson ©

In 1951 his work appeared in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and in 1954 his work was displayed in the Younger American Painters exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. The Harlem Riot of 1964 which Simpson witnessed firsthand, had a particular impact on his painting. The artist responded by creating the so-called “Confrontation” series of paintings that featured schematized black and white faces inter-meshed in an intense encounter. 

The Merton D. Simpson Gallery of Modern and Tribal Arts is famous for its exceptional collection of Tribal arts and for artworks by his contemporaries. As his knowledge and experience in the field grew he eventually became known as one of the most prominent dealers of traditional African art in the world and the international art world at large.

​​Merton Simpson died on March 9, 2013, in New York City. He was 84 years old.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Valerie Maynard

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Valerie Maynard

Fallen Through The Cracks – Cliff Joseph

Valerie Maynard

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Valerie Jean Maynard was born on August 22, 1937, in New York City, NY. She was a sculptor, teacher, printmaker, and designer who addressed themes of social inequality and the civil rights movement. She studied painting and drawing at the Museum of Modern Art, printmaking at the New School for Social Research, and earned a master’s in Art and Sculpture in 1977 at Vermont’s Goddard College.

Maynard taught at the Studio Museum in Harlem, at Howard University, the University of the Virgin Islands, and the Baltimore School for the Arts. She specialized in the preservation and restoration of traditional art by people of color. She re-contextualized motifs from the Middle Passage and the Civil Rights Movement into her work, offering commentary on the struggle of those in the African diaspora to achieve and maintain equal rights. In January 1977, Maynard was part of a contingent of hundreds of African-American artists who represented the North American Zone, exhibiting in FESTAC 77, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in Lagos, Nigeria.

In 2003, Maynard was commissioned to create a series of glass mosaic murals entitled Polyrhythmics of Consciousness and Light which is permanently installed in the subway station on 125th Street in New York City. In 2021, she received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Valerie Maynard died on September 19, 2022, in Baltimore, Maryland at the age of 85.

Valerie Maynard, Photography BMA/The Baltimore Museum of Art
Valerie Maynard, Photography BMA/The Baltimore Museum of Art

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Geoffrey Holder

Geoffrey Holder. © Estate of Geoffrey Holder.
Geoffrey Holder. © Estate of Geoffrey Holder.

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Geoffrey Holder

Fallen Through The Cracks – Geoffrey Holder

Geoffrey Holder

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Geoffrey Lamont Holder was born on August 1, 1930, in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He was an actor, dancer, musician, and artist. He was educated at Tranquility School and Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain but made his performance debut at seven years old in his brother Boscoe Holder’s dance company.

Seeing him perform in The Virgin Islands, choreographer Agnes de Mille invited Holder to work with her in New York where he joined Katherine Dunham’s dance school and taught folkloric forms. From 1955 to 1956, he performed with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet as a principal dancer but left the ballet to make his Broadway debut in the musical House of Flowers.

Geoffrey Holder. © Estate of Geoffrey Holder.
Geoffrey Holder, Woman With Flower, 1955. © Estate of Geoffrey Holder.

In 1973, he played a henchman in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die and also contributed to the film’s choreography. In 1975, Holder won two Tony Awards for direction and costume design of The Wiz, the all-black musical version of The Wizard of Oz. He was the first black man to be nominated in either category. He also won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design. 

Holder was a prolific painter, ardent art collector, author, and music composer. As a painter, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship in fine arts in 1956. In popular culture, Holder is known for portraying Nelson in the 1992 film Boomerang with Eddie Murphy. Geoffrey Holder died in New York City on October 5, 2014, at the age of 84.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks Projects

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Tina Allen

Tina Allen, © Estate of Tina Allen. Source: The Museum of Uncut Funk.
Tina Allen, © Estate of Tina Allen. Source: The Museum of Uncut Funk.

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Tina Allen

Fallen Through The Cracks – Tina Allen

Tina Allen

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Tina Allen was born Tina Powell on December 9, 1949, in Hempstead, New York.  She was a sculptor known for her monuments to prominent African Americans. Her sculpture focused on writing black history in bronze and emphasizing the contributions and aspirations of the African Diaspora. She was 13 years old when she began sculpting. Instead of following the assignment to make an ashtray, she made a bust of Aristotle instead. 

His artistic endeavors often reflected his strong anti-war stance, as many works critiqued the Vietnam War and warfare in general. A pivotal moment in Joseph’s career was in 1968 when he, alongside Benny Andrews and others, established the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC). This coalition arose as a reaction to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Harlem on My Mind” exhibition, which notably excluded Black artists. Joseph emphasized the importance of Black Art being curated by individuals who deeply understood the Black experience.

Tina Allen, © Estate of Tina Allen. Source: The Museum of Uncut Funk.
Tina Allen, © Estate of Tina Allen. Source: The Museum of Uncut Funk.

One of her best-known works is a 13-foot bronze likeness of #AlexHaley, which was installed in the Haley Heritage Square Park in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1998. Her statue of #GeorgeWashingtonCarver is the focal point of the George Washington Carver Garden at the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis. Her 12-foot bronze monument to #SojournerTruth is displayed in Memorial Park Battle Creek, Michigan and the bust of #FrederickDouglass is on display at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute; it was featured in a scene in the movie Akeelah and the Bee.

Allen also crafted a bronze medallion for the Women of Essence awards, which annually honor Black women of outstanding accomplishment and achievement. Tina Allen passed away on September 9, 2008, in Los Angeles, CA.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks Projects

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Don Hogan Charles

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Don Hogan Charles

Fallen Through The Cracks – Don Hogan Charles

Don Hogan Charles

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Don Hogan Charles was born “Daniel James Charles” on September 9, 1938, in New York City. He studied engineering at City College of New York before dropping out to pursue photography. He was the first African-American staff photographer hired by The New York Times. He remained on staff for 43 years until his retirement in 2007.

Charles started as a freelance photographer and appeared in major international publications with commercial clients including Oscar de la Renta, and Pan American World Airways. During his tenure at the New York Times, he photographed notable subjects including Coretta Scott King, John Lennon, Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ali.

Photography by Don Hogan Charles, © Estate of Don Hogan Charles
Photography by Don Hogan Charles, © Estate of Don Hogan Charles

His work focused on local hangouts and everyday people but he is most known for his extensive coverage of figures of the civil rights era. One of his most iconic photos is the photo of Malcolm X holding an M1 carbine while peeking out a window. The photo was commissioned by Ebony Magazine and became a symbol of the lengths the civil rights leader would go to, to protect his family. “By Any Means Necessary”. 

In 1967, Charles captured a photo of a young boy with his hands up walking in front of soldiers during the Newark riots, one of more than 150 racial riots in the country that summer. Charles’ work is in the collections of the Museum Of Modern Art and the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. Don Hogan Charles passed away on December 15, 2017, in Harlem, NY. 

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks Projects

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Varnette Patricia Honeywood

Varnette P. Honeywood Birthday, 1974,© Estate of Varnette P. Honeywood
Varnette P. Honeywood Birthday, 1974,© Estate of Varnette P. Honeywood

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Varnette Patricia Honeywood

Fallen Through The Cracks – Varnette Patricia Honeywood

Varnette Patricia Honeywood

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Varnette Patricia Honeywood was born on December 27, 1950, in Los Angeles, CA. She was a painter, writer, and businesswoman who created paintings and collages depicting African-American life. She is highly regarded for using color and light, patterns, and textures. Creating positive visual images for Black children became one of her major goals. She focused on the history of African Americans, their sufferings and triumphs, and celebrated the strength and leadership of Black women. She often described her work as “figurative abstraction.”

She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Spelman in 1972, her Master of Science in Education, and her teaching credentials from the University of Southern California (USC) in 1974. She also earned an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Spelman College in 2005. Honeywood used her educational training to teach multicultural arts and crafts programs to minority children in public schools and as a graduate student, she taught art at the Los Angeles Central Juvenile Hall.

Varnette P. Honeywood Birthday, 1974,© Estate of Varnette P. Honeywood
Varnette P. Honeywood Birthday, 1974,© Estate of Varnette P. Honeywood
Varnette P. Honeywood Birthday, 1974,© Estate of Varnette P. Honeywood
Varnette P. Honeywood,© Estate of Varnette P. Honeywood

Camille Cosby discovered Honeywood’s work on note cards and she and her husband Bill Cosby started collecting her works. This led to the inclusion of Honeywood’s artwork, including her 1974 painting “Birthday”, on the walls of the Huxtable living room on the set of The Cosby Show. She had been asked to create a painting to be included in the show’s pilot and different examples of her paintings were cycled through during the show’s run.

Honeywood’s artwork can still be seen on various television shows, movies, and book covers. She is recognized by contemporary artists today for her significant contribution, helping to envision and shape Black visual culture. Varnette Honeywood died at age 59 on September 12, 2010, in Los Angeles after fighting cancer. 

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)