The Art of Other Suns a Consideration of Work Made in the Wake of The

essay made a lasting impression on me. In has grown deep like the rivers.” my research and work, I came upon “Souls Grown Diaspora” follows other artists like him, who fell into a subsequent wave of artists—many a common racial-geographic group- self-taught; others of whom studied ing: Alvin Baltrop, whose mother, at Pratt, the School of Visual Arts and “Sometimes, I feel discriminated Dorothy Mae, gave birth to him in the the Fashion Institute of Technology; The Art of Other Suns against, but it does not make me angry. Bronx in 1948 after moving there from all of whom encountered racism and It merely astonishes me. How can Virginia; Joyce McDonald, whose par- marginalization in their careers. The any deny themselves the pleasure ents Willie (High Yella) and Florence exhibition, the design of which is of my company? It’s beyond me.” (Black Gal) McDonald, always known inspired by the traditions of yard art —Zora Neale Hurston by their nicknames, came north from and quilting, will include a wide range Alabama in 1945 after the war to of media: painting, drawing, photog- CBGB, New York City, 1996: It was Brooklyn’s Farragut Houses, where raphy, sculpture, textiles and jewelry, the first time I had ever watched the McDonald was raised with her six sib- alongside a collection of archival life force that was Wesley Willis—the lings and still lives; Bruce Davenport ephemera and research materials. unclassifiable cult musician—perform, Jr., who changed his name to Dapper Because over half of the artists make shouting, singing, rhapsodizing. After Bruce Lafitte in honor of the Lafitte and record music as part of their art the show, I went next door and bought Housing Project in the Sixth Ward of practices, the exhibition will also one of the remarkable pen-and-marker New Orleans, where he grew up. include a soundtrack. Chicago street drawings that had I came to perceive a larger “Souls Grown Diaspora” offers become his artistic calling card. In historical context for all of these a structure for considering the work exchange, Willis offered me a head dynamic artists, a pattern that could of a group of 10 disparate contempo- butt, his friendly salutation, making be traced to the Great Migration—the rary artists, some of them personally for an unforgettable transaction on the movement of six million African interconnected, all of whom explore Bowery. Around that same time, as Americans from the rural South to the vernacular traditions and engage my eyes slowly opened to art thriving urban Northeast, Midwest, and West actively with other contemporary art- in unexpected places, I would often see between 1916 and 1970. The upcoming ists of their day. Looking collectively striking pieces woven into the fabric of exhibition “Souls Grown Diaspora,” at these diverse artists—some dearly the street itself, along Astor Place—a which will be on view at the nonprofit departed, many still actively creating, series of bright orange, purple and gallery apexart in New York from some living with HIV, others sober green birds of paradise threaded January 11 to March 7, 2020, is the and in recovery, variously identi- through chain link fences, with red culmination of my thinking about fying as straight, bisexual, gay and ribbon pulling together the geometry. this phenomenon and all my looking trans—a number of themes emerge. This, as I came to learn, was the hand- over the years at its effects—a project Baltrop’s and Weston’s championing iwork—frayed, weathered, flapping that I hope will help bring into focus of the use of vernacular photography , c. 1975–86, gelatin silver print, 6.25 × 9.25". Courtesy Alvin Baltrop Trust and Galerie Buchholz. , c. 1975–86, gelatin silver print, 6.25 × 9.25". Courtesy Alvin Baltrop Trust in the breeze—of Curtis Cuffie, who a generation of visionary contempo- naturally leads toward an embrace of had developed a complex language of rary African-American artists from social media, by Weston himself, and assemblage sculpture during many throughout the United States and sit- by Houston Jr., and McDonald, who years of homelessness. uate their work amid the broader cul- create work across multiple platforms In 2017, I co-founded the gal- tural lineage of the Great Migration. and accounts. Handwritten words lery Gordon Robichaux and started The show’s title takes its inspi- and texts populate many of the art- working directly with the African- ration from Atlanta’s Souls Grown works—conveying humor, urgency, American “outsider” artists Frederick Deep Foundation, whose founder, abstraction and politics with everyday Weston and Otis Houston Jr. In our William S. Arnett, worked for decades language. Other themes in the exhi- curatorial projects and exhibitions to help to identify and establish a bition, such as the home as studio, A consideration of work at the gallery, other little-known group of pioneering black artists from the street as studio, public housing, black artists began to come to our the South—among them Thornton SROs, homelessness and mental attention—designer Sara Penn, for Dial, Lonnie Holley, Mary T. Smith, health issues, are especially import- example, and singer-artist Stephanie Hawkins Bolden and the women’s ant given the tremendous impact of made in the wake Crawford—sparking memories of collective Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers these subjects on the lives and work Willis and Cuffie, those artists whose (Arlonzia Pettway, Annie Mae Young of these artists. What follows are brief work had so radically reoriented my and Mary Lee Bendolph)—as essen- biographical and professional sketches of the Great Migration thinking in the ’90s. tial to the understanding of devel- of each participant, along with images A year before opening the gal- opments in the history of American of their work, presented as a kind of Pier 52 (Gordon Matta-Clark’s “Day’s End” building cuts with two men) “Day’s Matta-Clark’s Pier 52 (Gordon lery, while working with the organi- art. The name “Souls Grown Deep” exhibition within the pages of a mag- zation Visual AIDS on an exhibition, originates from the last line of azine—a nod to the unconventional I’d met Raynes Birkbeck, whose Langston Hughes’ 1921 poem “The forums within which many of these Alvin Baltrop, fantastic drawings and sculptures also Negro Speaks of Rivers”: “My soul artists have worked. By Sam Gordon 49 a taxi driver and became a self-employed mover.… Samuel Delany. Birkbeck’s idiosyncratic practice party scenes in Detroit, Chicago and New York Alvin Baltrop In spite of the remarkable documentary and aes- blends the supernatural and the everyday with for their innovative fashion and music. Crawford thetic value of what he accomplished, Baltrop was the goal of revealing to the viewer, as he says, “the eventually moved to New York in the 1970s, and (1948–2004) almost completely unsuccessful at getting his work beauty, the power, the love and the need of nature at 36, got a scholarship to pursue an MFA at Pratt, exhibited during his lifetime.” But since his death, or a higher power. [That] even in the most mundane where she became close with the influential East his work has increased dramatically in visibility— and commonplace things, ‘the Force’ is always Village trans artist Greer Lankton. She then turned on the walls now in the permanent collection of present. That the existence of nature and god are her focus to jazz—the music of modernity and the expanded Museum of Modern Art, for exam- evident due to the fact that all things are made self-invention—becoming well known in the ’80s ple, and in a critically celebrated retrospective at up of atoms and thus are created by, maintained, as a singer who bridged the world of blues and the Bronx Museum that remains on view through destroyed, resurrected and governed by nuclear drag, performing at the Blue Note in the Village and February 9, 2020. forces, states, conditions and laws.” A mystic and the Pyramid Club on Avenue A. The artist Tabboo!, chronicler of epic stories, Birkbeck, who was born who performed regularly at the Pyramid as well, in the Bronx with family roots in the Deep South, is describes Crawford as “the Billie Holiday, Sarah a Henry Darger–like character, if Darger had been Vaughan, Dinah Washington of the queer world.” Raynes Birkbeck into bathhouses and the bear scene. This past fall, From 1989 to 1996, she taught jazz vocals in Paris he debuted a solo exhibition at Situations on the and received the prestigious award “Django D’Or” (b. 1956) Lower East Side; a documentary trailer on the artist for Best International Jazz Vocalist in 1993. A prac- will be screened during an evening program at ticing Buddhist, Crawford now lives in Oakland, apexart in January. where she continues to perform and teach. “Teaching was how I was able to survive,” she says. Stephanie Crawford Alvin Baltrop, Piers (open window), c. 1975–86, Curtis Cuffie gelatin silver print, 7.5 × 9 .5". Courtesy Alvin Baltrop Trust and Galerie Buchholz. (b. 1942) (1955–2002) A photography prodigy, Alvin Baltrop began shoot- ing pictures of his friends and peers at a young age, moving on to famous subjects like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. He joined the Navy in 1969 and served in Vietnam, where he photographed fel- low sailors. While a student at the School of Visual Arts in the early 1970s, Baltrop began to photo- graph life along the West Side Piers—sunbathers, the gay cruising scene, criminal activity, the crum- bling contours of the historic piers themselves. “I soon grew determined to preserve the frightening, mad, unbelievable, violent and beautiful things that were going on at the time.

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