Black Artists On Display At Georgia Museum of Art

ATHENS, GA - The Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia will host a panel discussion featuring 11 artists from the museum’s current exhibition of works by African-American artists, “Tradition Redefined: The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African-American Art,” on March 24. Artists will arrive in the galleries at 4:30 p.m. to meet visitors and talk about their work, and the panel discussion will begin at 5:30 p.m. in the M. Smith Griffith Auditorium.

Carl Christian is primarily an abstract painter who earned an M.A. in music education from Georgia State University and attended the Art Institute of Atlanta. His work has been displayed in institutions such as the Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Ala., Morehouse College and Georgia State University in Atlanta.

Kevin Cole currently serves as the chairman of fine arts at West Lake High School in Atlanta and as a consultant for the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. He has been involved in numerous public art commissions, including the 1996 Coca-Cola Centennial Olympic Mural in Atlanta.

Stephanie Jackson envisions the African-American experience through figurative painting. She is currently a professor of art at UGA and has received awards including the 2002 Adolf and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Award in recognition of 20 years of sustained art making and dedication to the arts.

Larry Walker combines photos and other reproduced images with paint. He graduated from the renowned High School of Music and Art in New York City. He retired as professor emeritus from Georgia State University’s Ernst G. Welch School of Art and Design.

Larry Lebby specializes in lithography, watercolor and paintings in oil and acrylic. His work has been displayed throughout the United States and featured in the White House, the Smithsonian Institution, the United Nations and in the Vatican.

Richard Mayhew is primarily a landscape painter who considers himself an improvisationalist. He studied art in the 1950s at the Brooklyn Museum of Fine Art School, the Art Students League and the Brooklyn Museum Art School. His works have been exhibited widely in solo and group shows and are in the collections of major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Valerie Maynard is an expressionist artist who draws her inspiration from spiritual and political sources, putting African-American culture and the political struggle of blacks into visual form. Her work has been displayed in international venues such as the Reichhold Center for the Arts, University of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas, and the Riksutallnlgar National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden.

Maria-Lana Queen is a former runway model who began painting to transform the sorrow of her brother’s death into a celebration of his life. Her abstract paintings serve as a visual diary of her feelings. Queen received a B.A. from the University of the District of Columbia.

Preston Sampson studied under David C. Driskell at the University of Maryland, College Park. Since graduating in 1984, he has been awarded numerous grants and honors, including the Absolut Expressions ad campaign for Absolut Vodka in 1997.

Joyce Wellman is an abstract painter and printmaker from New York who is known for her interest in the relationship among mathematics, physics and art. She also specializes in creating artist’s books and public art projects.

Abstract artist William T. Williams earned a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute and an M.F.A. from Yale University. He was the first African American to be included in H.W. Janson’s textbookHistory of Art. His work has been displayed all over the world in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Studio Museum of Harlem.

“Tradition Redefined” features 72 works by 67 African-American artists who typically have not been recognized in the traditional narratives of African-American art. This exhibition, which contains works created from the 1890s to 2007, is organized by the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Adrienne L. Childs, curator in residence of the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, will moderate the discussion. The center celebrates the legacy of Driskell—distinguished university professor emeritus of art, artist, art historian, collector and curator—by preserving the rich heritage of African-American visual art and culture. Established in 2001, the center provides an intellectual home for artists, museum professionals, art administrators and scholars of color, broadening the field of African Diaspora studies. The Driskell Center is committed to preserving, documenting and presenting African-American art, as well as replenishing and expanding the field of African-American art.