A seemingly incongruous part of my life is that I spent 4 summers at a sailing camp in cape cod. The first cabin I was in was called ‘windswept’ which is also the name of this piece for #BlueskyArtShow #Flowing #AbstractPhotography #AbstractArt

‘Peak Dreaming’ #BlueskyMonday #AbstractPhotography #AbstractArt #Abstract

It seems fitting to close out #BlackHistoryMonth with MURJONI MERRIWEATHER, whose ‘sculpted beings’ celebrate Bkack bodies & culture. Demolishing stereotypes, elevating love for the Black people that are embodied in her work. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists

There’s a beautiful creative tension in the work of CHAKAIA BOOKER: btw the natural & the manufactured, btw the discarded & the valued. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

Monuments Are Lies You Walk Past Public monuments do not merely commemorate; they authorize. They are among the most durable visual technologies through which a polity narrates itself, naturalizes hierarchy, and renders particular histories as civic common sense.

OLIVER LEE JACKSON is both painter and sculptor. Either way, his practice is abstract but….but then, figures seem to emerge from that abstraction in powerful ways. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

Charlotta Spears Bass, longtime editor of the Black newspaper The California Eagle, was a journalist and activist who fought for the civil rights of African Americans in the early and mid-20th century. She's the first Black woman to run for vice president of the United States (1952).

LEONARDO DREW’s own words: “abstractionist. I’m also a walking political figure as a Black man. I am political because of who I am, what I am, and what I look like; and I have the audacity in these times to say that I’m an abstractionist” 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

TYREE GUYTON is an urban environmental artist as well as a painter, installation artist. He blurs the line btw mundane objects and art, using discarded objects to create his works. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

In her painting, collage, prints, and sculptures, MILDRED THOMPSON sought to create connections, to understand relationships across the universe. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

HELEN RAMSARAN works not in figures, often botanical or ritualistic/spiritual, but nevertheless references the Black American experience. Racial violence & gun violence were the focus of a recent exhibition. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

A member of the Harlem Renaissance, SELMA BURKE was committed to portraying her Black subjects with dignity and grace. That this is a common theme for her fellow Black representational artist reveals the depth of racism within art. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

‘homage to two: Yamasaki & Pelli’ #Two downtown MPLS buildings went into this #AbstractPhotography for #BlueskyArtShow #AbstractArt #Abstract #Photography

BEULAH ECTON WOODARD began her art career at 33 and died at 59, so a short career has left us with not enough works. But what we do have are busts that show a delicate touch, sensitivity, quiet grace. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

Bringing the past into the future and connecting both with and between Black folx is the reason for THEASTER GATES’s work in sculpture and beyond. Saving, protecting, transforming the discarded. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

A ceramicist & sculptor, WINNIE OWENS-HART began her career with curiosity about the ceramics of African cultures, and has been active in the preservation of aboriginal pottery traditions. She has apprenticed with villages in Nigeria & Ghana. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

Many of ELIZABETH CATLETT’s sculptures were focused on presenting a full array of the experience of Black women: motherhood, powerful protest, sensuality. Social justice and feminism were at the forefront. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

Yesterday I went to the modern wing at @artinstitutechi.bsky.social. I cried 3 times, once at each of the below pieces of work. Art is so real, yall. Thank doggess for the artists, in this case, Barbara Hepworth, Joan Mitchell, and Simone Leigh. #AbstractArt

NICK CAVE first began creating his ‘Soundsuits’ as a response to the Rodney King beating. Based on his own body scale, the suits are elaborate, fantastical, wearable second skins that obscure race, gender, age of the wearer. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

Bald-faced lie.

FIRELEI BÁEZ is a painter & sculptor, a member of the Black diaspora (Haitian/Domincan). She creates art with themes of colonization, resilience, Caribbean mythologies, identity, migration. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

BARBARA CHASE-RIBOUD started sculpting at 7 and sold a woodcut to MoMA at age 15. Moving to France in the 60s after her training at Yale, there she has remained since, working still. 🧵 1/ #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

CHIFFON THOMAS creates “impossible bodies” from a variety of material that would be discarded. Assembling objects with their own histories & meaning to create new structures or bodies, fragile yet enduring. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

RICHARD HUNT was a gifted artist from the word go. MoMA purchased a piece of his while he was still a student. Another piece completed one year after art school stands in the grand staircase of Chicago’s Art Institute. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

In 1881 SCOTT ISAAC HATHAWAY, at 9 years old, visited an art museum and searched for sculpture of his hero, Frederick Douglass. Upon learning that there weren’t #BlackSculptors enough to make busts of Black folk, he resolved to be that sculptor. And so he was. 🧵1/n #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

VANESSA GERMAN (or vanessa german as she styles her name) produces what she calls ‘portrait sculptures’ that reflect & embody Black culture. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

For some reason I missed that @wealiearts.bsky.social has a new challenge for Abstract works! Better late than ever? Last week’s theme for #Abstractia #ArtChallenge is the prompt #REPETITION This is ‘Film Strip, Oax’ … something about it reminds me of the contact sheets of my darkroom days

In 2023, by chance I saw an exhibit of works by SIMONE LEIGH at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. I was immediately transfixed by her Black femme forms, her allusions to histories & roots & women’s labor. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

WILLIAM ELLISWORTH ARTIS is relatively unknown, esp compared to his contemporaries in the Harlem Renaissance. But my gah the sublime beauty of these busts is pretty hard to ignore! 2/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

A product of the Great Migration to NYC. Another member of the Harlem Rensissance, WILLIAM ELLISWORTH ARTIS was a student of Augusta Savage when he was a teen. A ceramicist & sculptor, he often worked in clay. 🧵 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

‘unexpectedly rooted’ Sometimes we’ve no idea of our strength until it’s tested, no idea that our ancestors, our descendants have us cradled with an unbroken bond. This is Mnisota Makoce. #AbstractPhotography #AbstractArt #Abstract #StunDay #OrangeSun #ColorADay

META VAUX WARRICK FULLER is believed to have been one of the sparks for the Harlem Renaissance, even though her early career was in France & later worked back home in Philadelphia. Many of her early work was lost in a warehouse fire. #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

One of the reasons I do artists for #BlackHistoryMonth is that it constantly teaches me about artists I don’t know. Today that’s MELVIN EDWARDS. I’m shocked because I did #BlackAbstractArtists last year & he didn’t come up! These are from his Lynch Fragments series. #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists

20 days being locked up is ::checks notes:: 20 DAYS TOO LONG. ffs it’s not hard to see how far down the wrong path we’ve gone

EDMONIA LEWIS, the greatest of the great originals. The first Black & Native American woman to gain recognition as a sculptor. Most of her career was spent in Rome, working in marble & in neo-classical style. 1/n #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

Today in #BlackSculptors we have another OG in the contemporary art world, DAVID HAMMONS. His works on variations of the African-American flag are, of course, iconic. 1/n #BlackArtists #BlackHistoryMonth

A mixed media artist who produces assemblages - and even sculptures - by upcycling objects and material, BETYE SAAR has been creating artworks since she was a child (born 1926!). 1/n #BlackHistoryMonth #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists

HANK WILLIS THOMAS uses photography, mixed media, and sculpture to explore ideas of identity, race, popular culture and media. Perhaps most famous among his sculpture is ‘The Embrace’ a memorial to MLKjr & Coretta Scott King. 1/n #BlackHistoryMonth #BlackSculptors #BlackArtists

1st up in series of #BlackSculptors is the great AUGUSTA SAVAGE. I love her work; she & my dad were sculptors in NYC at the same time, both worked for the WPA’s Federal Art Project, had sculptures in the 1939 World’s Fair. I’ll never know if they knew each other. 1/n #BlackHistoryMonth #BlackArtist

#BlackHistoryMonth means I’ll be doing daily posts about #BlackSculptors Some overlap with last year’s #BlackAbstractArtists is inevitable. Hope you will follow along!

And a totally non-abstract photograph of my beloved #Oaxaca that features #clouds #BlueskyArtShow #Photography

Most of my paintings feature some sort of #clouds. Here are some stormy ones for today's #BlueSkyArtShow Tisha Mark ©2024, In the Storm II, oil on canvas, 12”x12” Original is available: tishamark.com/product/in-t... #art #painting #SciArt #TraditionalArt #bsnm #ArtistsOnBlueSky

I’ll admit that my creativity has taken a real hit these past weeks with the occupation of my city & state by 🧊. I’m now on a bit of a break to So. California, so was able to make this #abstract of #clouds reflected in the sand for #BlueskyArtShow #AbstractPhotography #AbstractArt

I can verify this is true. Countless of my neighbors doing this work for no recognition, we only do it to know we’ve kept our neighbors a tiny bit safer, made it possible for them to go to the store, to go to school. To know that the day came and we stepped the fuck up.

they're executing moms and nurses in the street. they're using preschoolers as bait. they're stealing people's dads and grandmas and children. they're tear gassing babies. they're staking out schools. there is no remedy but abolition. any proposal that doesn't start there is an act of violence.

This happened in my neighborhood, I knew it was happening as it went down. Something like this happens every day, multiple times. ICE agents are lawless, as far as I can tell they have been told to terrorize us because the president is mad at Minnesota. Irreparable harm is being done. Who will pay?

Last time I was in #Oaxaca I took a number of ‘straight’ shots & have taken a long time figuring out how to make them ‘mine’ - creative, unrealism, capturing my emotions. I was so thrilled to see these flowers growing up next to the cactus. Good enuff for #StunDay #AbstractPhotography #photography

Light on the Lily Pond #ColorADay #GreenSat #AbstractPhotography #AbstractArt #photography

If you are in twin cities, love art & haven’t been to see Dyani White Hawk’s exhibit at @walkerartgallery.bsky.social, do not delay! Go now! Here’s a multiple exposure I made with 1 of her pieces & the trees outside a window adjacent.

For #BWFri I thought I’d share two versions of the same image, even tho one of them is only 1/2 black & white. Just fun to see the options one has when doing #CreativePhotography #ColorADay #Photography #Oaxaca