By Sedrick Huckaby
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Untitled (Man at Desk)
Pen and ink on paper, 2012
Signed lower right
Series: Portraits of Community: Hidden in Plain Sight, 2012
References And Exhibitions:
Illustrated: Swarthmore College video for their exhibition "Hidden in Plain Sight," Jan 24- Feb 24, 2013.
Born in Fort Worth in 1975, Huckaby has been creating some form of art since his childhood. In 1995, he began his formal art studies at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. After a brief stay he transferred to Boston University, where he received a BFA degree. He then earned a MFA degree from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Huckaby is known for his powerful use of color and his exploration of cultural roles and the heritage of the African American family. His work has evolved from portraiture to objects and interiors that venerate his personal family legacy rooted in Fort Worth, Texas. Portraying these familiar subjects on a large scale and pushing his use of materials, Huckaby defines the significance of family and tradition while touching on the subject of ethnographic stereotypes in our culture.
For the past few years he has concentrated his efforts on a series of quilt paintings. One of the series he created is a tribute to both of his Grandmothers and a celebration of the African American quilting tradition. He used the actual quilts sewn by family members as models for his paintings. These quilts document significant events in his family history. According to Huckaby, the paintings represent an artistic family legacy. The colorful, rhythmic abstracted patterns come together like the musical notes in African American musician John Coltrane's famous jazz composition, A Love Supreme, from which the painting series acquired its name.
He has earned national acclaim for his work over the past several years. Huckaby has received the 2001 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and the 2004 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant Program Award. More recently, he was the 2008 recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship Award, which allowed him to travel the country and paint African-American quilts from private and public collections. Past Guggenheim Fellowship Award winners include Ansel Adams, Langston Hughes, Henry Kissinger, and Isamu Noguchi.
He has exhibited at the Resource Center of African American Art in Atlanta, the Danforth Museum in Framingham, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. His work, including a painting titled Study for Little D and the Dollar, in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, can be found in important collections throughout the United States, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Minneapolis Museum of Art. Currently, Huckaby’s 18-by-14-foot oil painting Hidden in Plain Site (2011) is on view in the Amon Carter Museum’s atrium through October.
Public Collections:
Wichita Falls Museum of Art at Midwestern State University, American Dad
African American Museum, Dallas, Texas, Grandmother’s Quilt
The Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, The 99% - Highland Hills
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, "Girl World" Study for Sustenance Installation
Ball State University Museum of Art, Muncie, Indiana, "The Truth about Hip Hop" Study for Sustenance
Installation
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas
Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The 99% - Highland Hills
City of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX, The Welcome Space
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Corporate Aviation, Texas, A Place Between
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Hyatt Regency Hotel, Texas, William Madison (Gooseneck Bill)
McDonald
Fort Worth Central Library, Fort Worth, Texas, Hazel Harvey Peace Portrait
Grace Museum, Abilene, Texas, Cobby
Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge, MA, Selection from The 99%
Holdworth Center, Austin, TX, Selection from The 99%
Jesuit Dallas Museum, Dallas, Texas, “Gone But Not Forgotten: Sha”
Kansas African American Museum, Wichita, Kansas, Self Portrait (2)
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas, Untitled (Anthony)
Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota (Untitled)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, Enocio
Museum of Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, Big Momma...
Category
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art by Medium: Ballpoint Pen
