| Artists of the 2021 Social Justice Exhibit: A. Drew Hammond, Beverly Tipton Hammond, Kathy Mommsen, seangarrison, Broderick Poole, Loretta Bebeau, and Karen Kraco.
In this new work above, I carve directly in wet clay and observe dancer, Alexis, moving, posing and responding to the killing of George Floyd. By working directly from a live model I strive to make you feel the tension, sweat and emotion of the dancers in these large scaled ceramic murals.
Organizer of the show, Beverly Tipton Hammond brought together seven artists whose work exposes emotions from heartbreak to self reflection. Some works reaching back to the beginnings of slavery while others contemplate the tragic events of last summer.
A. Drew Hammond slices open a watermelon and sees the bow of a slave ship carrying stolen people from the African continent. In his painting “Melon-Colony 1619” the seeds of the watermelon become tightly packed rows of men and women, drawing startling parallels to the 1808 diagram of a slave ship by Thomas Clarkson. With paint and collage Hammond awakens us with stark graphics of subjects from Emmett Till, John Lewis, Sunday in Selma, to children of color raising their younger siblings. (See photo below)
seangarrison refers to Billie Holiday’s soul crushing song, “Strange Fruit” when describing his painting ”They Are With Us” about victims of lynchings and the afterlife.
(10 guest at a time for socially distanced viewing) |
