“Of Another Canon” consists of work by 11 African American artists, all of whom have received critical acclaim for their individualized and inventive styles.
While not a comprehensive examination of African American vernacular art, the objects in the exhibition allow us to consider the range of subject matter, material use, and inspiration that describes a body of work created by artists born in the south, subjected to the constraints of Jim Crow, and alive during the Cold War and Civil Rights Movement.
Untrained and subject to the dual, almost insurmountable, constraints of economics and Jim Crow, the artists on display in “Of Another Canon: African American Outsider Art, 1947-67” at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center possessed a creative fire. Despite cruelly stacked odds, Mozell S. Benson, Rudolph Bostic, Bessie Harvey, Anderson Johnson, Mary Proctor, Bernice Sims, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Annie Mural Tolliver, Mose Ernest Tolliver (aka Mose T), and Ruby Williams persevered in their art, creating work that brims with raw authenticity, joy, and passion.
On display until January 7, 2023, at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.
