Try and walk a mile in her shoes
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“Letting the streets have you is like planning your own funeral. I wanted the streetlight brights, the money in the morning, not the back alleys. Not the sirens. But, here we are. Streets always find you in the daylight, when you least expect them to. Night crawling up to me when the sun’s out.”
— Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling
A Snippet:
Given her young age, Kiara’s ill-equipped to deal with the harsh realities of streetwalking. But, will a chance encounter with a police officer ultimately lead to Kiara’s salvation or further ruin?
Learn more . . .
178. “Bobby Seale” (2020-2021)
“I had to take two shots of tequila and I cried. I thought of all the Black folk who have been gagged, who have been silenced.”
— Karon Davis
Did you know?
Did you know that Bobby Seale bound, gagged, and chained to a chair in a Chicago courtroom is one of the most searing images in American history? One that has haunted artist Karon Davis for many years?
As reported during the trial of the Chicago 8 in October 1969, “There were no photographs of this shocking episode, only artists’ sketches.”
This strange and bizarre detail in American history has served to make Karon Davis’s more recent (2020-2021) depiction of Bobby Seale, physically restrained but defiant, refusing to submit to judge Julius Hoffman, all the more indelible for a new generation.
Created using a unique plaster method (drawing from her background in theater and film), Davis’s figures are life-sized casts taken from friends and family as well as from her own body - reflecting her longtime interest in ancient Egyptian mummification and the process of preservation.
179. “Servant And Child”
“The leading portrait painter of the race.”
— W. E. B. Du Bois (describing artist Edwin Augustus Harleston)
Did you know?
Did you know that Edwin Augustus ‘Teddy’ Harleston (born in Charleston, South Carolina, on March 14, 1882) won a scholarship to the Avery Normal Institute and graduated valedictorian of his class in the year 1900?
(The Avery Normal Institute, founded in 1865, was the first accredited secondary school for African Americans in Charleston.)
Years later, Edwin Harleston went on to become a successful portrait artist and founding member of the Charleston, South Carolina, chapter of the NAACP in 1917, serving as its first president.
In 1919, Edwin Harleston was responsible for organizing a campaign to allow Black teachers to teach their own in Charleston’s Black public schools, resulting in a change to state law.
180. “Between The Two My Heart Is Balanced” (1991)
“The point I am often exploring vis-à-vis the Black experience is that of being so very visible and different in the White Western everyday—yet so invisible and disregarded in the cultural, historical, political or economic record or history.”
— Lubaina Himid
Did you know?
Did you know that in 2017 Lubaina Himid became the first Black woman to win the prestigious Turner Prize, annually awarded to the top British visual artist?
Lubaina Himid made her name in the 1980s as one of the early leaders of the British Black arts movement, described by The Daily Telegraph as an, “under-appreciated hero.”
When asked how she would spend the £25,000 cheque (presented alongside the award), Himid was quoted as saying, “I spend quite a lot of my money working with other artists, sometimes asking them to make things or helping them make things, when maybe they didn’t get a grant or whatever. So I’ll do a bit of that. And I’ll buy some shoes.”
Keep Ya Head Up.
(Breathe In . . . Breathe Out)
Try and walk a mile in her shoes
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