Sedrick Huckaby : A Love Supreme

December 10, 2008 — March 1, 2009

Also on view at the Nielsen Gallery, January 17, 2009 – February 14, 2009

Special Artist Talk Sunday, February 15, 3 pm

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About the Artist

Huckaby, born in 1975 in Fort Worth, Texas, is most inspired by his family, his faith, and his African-American heritage. During his student years at Boston University and Yale University, he had the opportunity to study under Sylvia Mangold, Catherine Murphy, John Walker and Edgar Heap of Birds.  Thanks to traveling scholarships, he journeyed to Europe to study the old masters in England, France and Italy. He has been honored with several awards, such as the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, the Anne Giles Kimbrough Grant from the Dallas Museum of Art, and this year’s prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. Huckaby’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina; and the African American Museum in Dallas, among others.

About the Exhibit

Sedrick Huckaby creates “quilt paintings” as a way to celebrate both his grandmother’s craft as well as the artistic legacy of the African American quilting tradition.  Huckaby has reproduced in thick, impasto paint the actual quilts produced by his grandmothers as backdrops for many of his portrait paintings of family and friends.  Now, for the current exhibition, he has elaborated on his use of murals and has created a painting installation in which the quilt paintings actually envelop the viewer and wrap themselves around you as you enter the gallery space.  A Love Supreme, Huckaby’s trompe-l’oeil mural of colored fabric, in oil on canvas, will be a welcome addition to the Danforth’s offerings this upcoming cold winter. Not only are the paintings about the importance of the quilting tradition but also bring to mind the rhythms and syncopations of another African American art form, jazz.  In fact, the title derives from John Coltrane’s famous jazz composition, A Love Supreme.

For further information about the artist, visit sedrickhuckaby.com.