March 27, 2018

James A. Porter Colloquium

James Amos Porter

The James A. Porter Colloquium is the leading forum for scholars, artists, curators, and individuals in the field of African American Art and Visual Culture. Established at Howard University in 1990, the Colloquium is named in honor of James A. Porter, the pioneering Art Historian and Professor, whose 1943 publication, Modern Negro Art, laid the foundation for the field of study. The annual Colloquium continues his legacy through dynamic programming, scholarly research, and artistic leadership. Past Colloquium presenters have included such leading scholars and artists as Huey Copeland, David C. Driskell, Ann Gibson, Sam Gilliam, Leslie King Hammond, Samella Lewis, Sarah Lewis, Richard Long, Kobena Mercer, Sharon F. Patton, Lowery Stokes Sims, Franklin Sirmans, Robert Farris Thompson, Alvia J. Wardlaw, Deborah Willis, and Judith Wilson.

Our lifetime achievement honoree, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, is an internationally renown painter, printmaker, curator and art educator. She exhibits and lectures widely – both nationally and internationally and lives and works in Oakland, California and maintains studios in Concon and Santiago, Chile, South America.

She is a graduate of Columbia University (MFA) and Howard University (BFA). While at Columbia she studied with Aja Junger, Stephen Greene, Leon Golden and Andra Ratz. Artists David Driskell, Lois Mailou Jones, James Porter and James Wells were among her teachers who provided her basic introduction to art practice while at Howard University.

As a printmaker she worked with Robert Blackburn of The Printmaking Workshop of New York City; Nemesio Antunez, the Director of Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and Founder of Taller 99 in Santiago, Chile; Tom Vanderlinden at the University of Texas at Austin and Professor Karl Kasten, founder of the Department of Printmaking at the University of California.

Chakaia Booker will be providing the Floyd Coleman Lecture on Friday, April 6th.Booker is a prominent artist known for her work using tires as a medium. Other mediums in which she works include metal fabrication, printmaking, painting and ceramics etc. She has shown widely in museums, galleries, and sculpture parks across the U.S. and internationally. Also she has
lectured and taught both nationally and internationally at colleges and universities as well as museums and galleries.
Booker fuses ecological concerns with explorations of racial and economic difference, globalization, and gender by recycling discarded tires into complex assemblages.

Tires, resonate with her for their versatility and rich range of historical and cultural associations. Booker slices, twists, weaves, and rivets this medium into radically new forms and textures. The tones of the rubber parallel human diversity, while the tire treads suggest images as varied as African scarification and textile designs. The visible wear and tear on the tires evokes the physical marks of human aging.

Join us Saturday, April 7th at 2:15 pm for our Materiality and Space panel. Artists Gregory Coates, James Maurelle and Amber Robles-Gordon will each discuss their approach and explore the role space and materiality play in their studio practices and in the exhibition of their art. Dr. Margo N. Crawford, Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania will later join the artists to moderate a panel discussion. All presentations during the Colloquium will take place at Howard University’s School of Business Auditorium. We hope to see you there!