NOW AND THEN
Show features African-american works from past, present
DELAWARE — The current exhibit at Ohio Wesleyan University’s Ross Art Museum not only is timed for Black History Month and the 100th anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance, but also serves as a dynamic representation of important central Ohio artists.
“Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow,” curated by Bettye Stull, long an expert in regional AfricanAmerican art, gathers 63 works in a variety of media by 30 artists, living and deceased.
The artists’ working periods range from the 1960s to the present with Smoky Brown, Larry Winston Collins, Ed Colston, Roman Johnson, Aminah Robinson and Mahler Ryder among the prominent names. Such artists have been mentors and inspirations for a younger generation whose works hang beside theirs in the exhibit.
“'Yesterday’s’ artists were on the cutting edge,” Stull writes in her statement regarding the exhibition. “'Today’ and ‘Tomorrow’s’ artists are new voices evolving, transforming and growing.”
Works by some of the best-known artists now deceased include a lovely photographic portrait of Elijah Pierce by Kojo Kamau; “Face,” a mixed-media piece painted with her distinctive dots and curved lines by Barbara Chavous; a selfportrait in oil by Johnson; two mixed-media female portraits by Robinson; and ceramic pieces, including the large, dome-shaped sculpture “Mov’n Back to Now,” by Robert J. Stull, the curator’s deceased husband.
Grouped under the “today and tomorrow” categories are 22 Columbus artists, all addressing topics pertinent to African-americans.
Janet George, a self-taught artist, is represented with, among other works, “We Too Dream America,” a 4-foot by 4-foot American flag with images of black Civil War soldiers stamped on the white stripes.
Wendy Kendrick, influenced by time spent in Tanzania in East Africa, created three boldly colored textile portraits of women’s faces, including “Beauty,” adorned with African fabrics and buttons.
Antoinette Savage, whose human stick figures echo those of Robinson, delivers whimsy with “Sisters of the Pew,” in which two women in Sunday-best dresses, hats and boots fan themselves on a pew constructed of wood and tree branches.
Percy King, a former Ohio State University safety particularly famous for blocking a punt in the 1998 Penn State game, turned to art after his football career. He creates three-dimensional plywood portraits, often
of famous figures. King's “Langston Hughes” is a large black-and-white image with curved and layered shapes creating the face of the famous poet.
In her acrylic painting “Walk on By,” Gaye Reissland depicts a homeless man asleep on a bench as six people walk past; only a little girl glances at him.
The Liberian-american artist Nora Musu, who lives in Columbus, produced “On to Liberty,” a large, five-part wall sculpture built of copper foil on panel and delivering a tropical landscape of birds, trees and boats.
There are many more artists represented in this diverse, appealing exhibit: Ron Anderson, Queen Brooks, Talle Bamazi, Richard Duarte Brown, Don Coulter, April Sunami and Pheoris West, to name a few.
Bettye Stull, 87, is the former curator for the King Arts Complex and has spent much of her life meeting, learning about and promoting the region’s rich population of AfricanAmerican artists. With this exhibit, she said in her statement, “I wanted to bring yesterday’s artists and tomorrow’s artists together, and I wanted to expose the Ohio Wesleyan and Delaware communities to their work.”
“Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow” amounts to a “who’s who and look what they can do” exhibit of African-american works worthy to be seen not only by Delaware but also the greater central Ohio community.
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