Sculptors African-American Art
David Butler was an African American sculptor and painter from Good Hope, Louisiana. His style is epitomized by kinetic sculptures made from recycled tin or wood, which he embellished with saturated colors and geometric patterns. His work is now in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the American Folk Art Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Arthur Dial is an American painter and sculptor living and working in Bessemer, Alabama. He is a part of the Dial family of artists, which include his older brother, Thornton Dial, and his nephews, Thornton Dial Jr., Richard Dial, and Ronald Lockett.
Dial created reliefs and paintings that narrowed in on a specific moment within the broader narrative that he wished to convey. He uses these moments, such as Eve reaching for the forbidden fruit or "George Wallace blockading the entrance to the University of Alabama in Montgomery," to highlight historical or folkloric moments of extreme tension. Dial's focus on scenes of conflict in humanity's real or imagined history come from his direct observation of southern life throughout the 20th century. He describes his narratives as "a record of what went by".
Ed Dwight, full name Edward Joseph Dwight Jr. is an American sculptor, writer, and former test pilot.
He was the first African-American to enter the Air Force training program from which NASA selected astronauts. He resigned from the Air Force in 1966 for reasons of racial discrimination, politics and bureaucracy and turned to the arts. Dwight earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from the University of Denver in 1977 and excelled as an artist. Most of Dwight's work depicts only black people, and his acclaimed series Jazz: The Shape of American Art focuses on the evolution of jazz and includes all iconic jazz performers.
Ed Dwight has had a thriving career in sculpture and has many high-profile projects to his credit. His unique masterpieces are displayed in several memorials across the United States. He has also become a historian and writer.
Nellie Mae Rowe was an African-American artist from Fayette County, Georgia. Although she is best known today for her colorful works on paper, Rowe worked across mediums, creating drawings, collages, altered photographs, hand-sewn dolls, home installations and sculptural environments. She was said to have an "instinctive understanding of the relation between color and form." Her work focuses on race, gender, domesticity, African-American folklore, and spiritual traditions.
