CRAFTING BLACKNESS

Black Bodies Making Form

Black Bodies Making Form

East Tennessee State University Tipton & Slocumb Galleries
September 1 – 29, 2023, Tipton Gallery; September 17 – October 7, 2023, Slocumb Galleries

Curators:

Karlota I. Contreras-Koterbay, Director, Slocumb Galleries, East Tennessee State University

Karen LeBlanc Sullivan, UMOJA Board Member as well as Advisory Board Member for the McKinney Center

The ETSU Department of Art Design’s Slocumb & Tipton Galleries with Tennessee Craft and partners hosted the inaugural Crafting Blackness Initiative’s Black Bodies Making Form exhibition series and panel. Featuring Black Tennessee Craft artists since 1920, the public was invited to the Crafting Blackness Panel and closing reception at the Tipton Gallery on September 28.

The exhibitions were co curated by Karlota Contreras-Koterbay with ETSU Advancement director and Umoja board member Karen LeBlanc Sullivan featuring influential and contemporary Black Craft artists from Tennessee including historical figures like William Edmondson+, Bessie Harvey+, Greg Ridley+, Fritz Massaquoi+, and Sammie Nicely+. Governor’s art awardees Hattie Marshall-Duncan and Bill Capshaw were also included in the stellar line up of this unprecedented project that will tour the rest of our state until 2027 culminating with blockbuster exhibitions and publications.

Co-curator Karen Sullivan described the project as “works memorializing history, celebrating protest, venerating faith, and honoring family. We came across works that encompassed, celebrated, elevated, and revealed Black Life through craft.” She added, “found and concocted materials transformed into figures expected and unexpected were discovered in humble locations with diverse and talented makers expressing themselves through their creations utilized a broad range of techniques, and points of view.” Both curators described the craft practitioners as “visual griots,” with the exhibition offering opportunities to expand perceptions in viewing Black life through creations of craft.

The Crafting Blackness Initiative is generously support by Arts Fund of East Tennessee State Foundation, Tennessee Arts Commission’s Arts Project Support (APS) and Arts Build Communities (ABC) grants, and In These Mountains Project Grant from South Arts with ETSU’s Student Activities Allocation Committee and Mary B. Martin School of the Arts. The exhibitions also boasts some of our partner institutions’ collections including the Hiram Van Gordon Gallery from Tennessee State University, the Sammie Nicely Collection of the Reece Museum, West West Tennessee Regional Art Center, Knoxville Museum of Art’s Bessie Harvey and Austin Peay University’s William Edmondson, the first African American artist featured at MoMA in 1930s that opened immense opportunities for Black folk artists.

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