Visual Arts: Riffe Gallery exhibit gives 'gut-punching' glimpse into Black American life
The struggles, challenges, determination and pride experienced every day by Black Americans are front and center in an exhibit Downtown in the Riffe Gallery.
“Black Life as Subject Matter II,” curated by Willis “Bing” Davis and continuing through July 8, presents 56 works in a variety of media by Black artists from Ohio. Racism is the primary theme and through paintings, drawings, sculptures, quilts, mixed media works and more, the artists confront, process and present their feelings about that subject.
Davis, 84, is an educator and artist whose own works reflect Black American life and African culture. In this exhibit and its predecessor — “Black Life as Subject Matter” presented in 2016 in his hometown of Dayton — Davis has assembled powerful works that especially speak to the artists’ experiences in the last five to 10 years.
“Today we are a community, a nation, and a world in a great state of struggle and change,” Davis writes in his curator’s statement. “The protests that continue to occur in cities north, south, east and west have reached a point of no-return-to-the-way-things-used-to-be. The all-too-frequent recorded brutality and recorded deaths have given rise to a determination not previously seen in the struggle for freedom, justice and peace.”
Q&A: Author B.A. Shapiro takes a detour from art trilogy with new book, 'Metropolis'
As one would expect, many of the works can be difficult to see. Dayton artist Dwayne Daniel’s paintings and drawings present images such as a bound Black man crouching under a Confederate flag. Another Dayton artist, James Pate, depicts a contemporary Black man in a suit with the metal yoke used on slaves attached to his neck.
But Pate also has created one of the most uplifting works – his charcoal drawing “Ayo’s Chair.” In it, a young boy absorbed in the book he’s reading sits on a chair whose legs are carved with the faces of strong, Black men. Behind the boy is a studio with artists hard at work on sculptures and paintings. The drawing beautifully captures the importance of positive role models for Black children.
Davis, the curator, has several works including “Anti-Police Brutality Dance Mask #22,” a defiant full-body structure built of clay and found objects.
Among the accomplished painters in the exhibit are Ronnie Williams of Dayton whose “Inside Out” confronts the issue of Black assimilation into white culture; former Dayton resident Abner Cope whose “Virginia” shows a proud Black woman in braids; and Thomas Hudson of Richmond Heights who profiles a working man in “Switch.”
One of the loveliest works is the colorful “Mr. President,” a 2009 fiber art quilt celebrating the election of Barack Obama, by Cincinnati’s Cynthia Lockhart.
Centerville artist Lois Fortson-Kirk pays homage to the late John Lewis with a terra cotta bust. Larry Winston Collins of Oxford is represented with two mixed-media sculptures of shooting victims, “Homage to John Crawford III” and “Homage to Sam DuBose.”
Shaker Heights artist Chelsea Craig created a sculpture of herself with both dark and light skin tones, representing the different complexions of Black Americans and questioning how they figure into the concept of beauty.
In his digital photographic painting, Horace Dozier Sr. of Dayton assembled slogans from protests including this relevant one: “You know it’s time for change when children act like leaders and leaders act like children.”
Visual arts: Upper Arlington artist's exhibit a quirky meld of shapes, colors and images
And Robert Parkey III of Dayton contributed two color photographs of the "Mammy" caricature. In his statement, Parkey noted that he was used to seeing such figures in antique shops garage sales and never thought much about them until he saw one with a price tag around her neck. It struck him, he wrote, that Black Americans were still being sold.
Such gut-punching moments can be found throughout this exhibit even as viewers examine other images that capture beauty and accomplishments in Black American life. This wide-ranging mixture of visual stories echoes something Davis writes in his statement.
“The arts may not have solutions to all the problems in society but the arts have the energy and power to identify things to celebrate and preserve, but to also reveal questions worthy of broad consideration and discussion within the community and the nation.”
negilson@gmail.com
At a glance
“Black Life as Subject Matter II” continues through July 8 in the Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery, 77 S. High St. Hours: noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays. Call 614-644-9624 or visit www.riffegallery.org.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Exhibit examining Black life in America on display in Riffe Gallery
