BLACKBURN 20|20
From The Archives, Selections By Donna Mason
November 11 - December 11, 2022
Reception: Sunday, November 20, 2-6PM
Valerie Maynard Yemeyoh
Ademola Olugebefola
Aminah Robinson
Betty Blayton-Taylor
Elizabeth Catlett
Ellsworth Ausby
Faith Ringgold
Francisco Mora
Helen Ramsaran
Jamillah Jennings
Mei-Tei-Sing Smith
Nanette Carter
Noah Jemisin
Nzinga Ashley
Richard J Powell
Selma Burke
Valerie Maynard
Williams T. Williams
The exhibition, ‘From The Collection, Selections By Donna Mason,' explores historical relationships of prominent and lesser-known African American visual artists to the Robert Blackburn Collection. The selection of original prints celebrates the creative community Blackburn created by unveiling the proverbial six degrees of separation relationships that undergird the artist community.
In 1947, Robert Blackburn founded a printmaking workshop as a welcoming space where artists of any level could learn and create together, and it remains in operation to this day - as The Elizabeth Foundation for the Art's Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop.
The oldest and largest artist-run print workshop in the United States, Blackburn openly shared his knowledge with the community, providing an open graphics studio for artists of diverse social and economic backgrounds, ethnicities, styles and levels of expertise - welcoming thousands of artists from across the United States and around the world.
‘From The Collection, Selections By Donna Mason,' presents a synapses, a contextual look at social networks - relationships/acquaintanceship that amplify connectivity and collaborative relationships through work in the Blackburn Collection.
Artists like Betty Blayton Taylor whose stature as an artist is subsumed because she sublimated her art practice and art world position by becoming an institution builder and educator. A founding member of the Studio Museum in Harlem, Blayton also co-founded Harlem Children's Art Carnival (CAC) and Harlem Textile Works. As well as serving as executive director of CAC, Blayton was an advisor, consultant and board member to a variety of other arts and community-based service organizations and programs including the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop.
Richard J. Powell, Duke University Professor and a leading scholar in African American art history and criticism. Powell earned his M.F.A. degree from Howard University with a specialization in Printmaking. He was one of the first to organize a survey of works by African American printmakers when he curated Impressions/Expressions: Black American Graphics, at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979.
Couples like John and Richanda Rhoden, Ellsworth Ausby and Jamillah Jennings and Elizabeth Catlett and Francisco Mora who shared space at the Blackburn Studio. The Rhodens, unique among them who worked as collaborative artists on their prints. The couple, who by all indications had a storied romance, marrying in Italy in the 1940s traveling and working together and cementing that closeness evidenced in creating tandem prints, combining their separate practice in one work. While Ellsworth Ausby and Jamillah Jennings relationship and collaborative approach is mirrored in a marriage of their shared color pallet.
Supportive friendships like world-renowned artist, author, and social activist, Faith Ringgold who introduced Ohio based artist, Aminah Robinson, to the Blackburn studio and continued to follow the mantra of the shop outside of those confines by supporting and making a place for Robinson whenever the opportunity arose.
Sharing Kinship, ideology and circumstance, like Sculptor and printmaker, Valerie Maynard, who passed recently at age 85 on September 19, 2022 and Painter, print- maker and theatre scenic designer, Ademola Olugebefola who aligned themselves as soldiers of The Black Arts Movement who understood art making as a cultural voice of and for the people.
While both artists six decade career skirt recognition and gallery representation their inward lens made social commentary to engage and activate social change while their art celebrated the beauty of the Black form, visage and African American culture.
“Valerie Maynard is one of the most important postwar American artists that most people have never heard of,” Bill Gaskins, the founding director of the Photography + Media & Society program at the Maryland Institute College of Art. This same sentiment was said in a 2021 New York Times review of The Art Students League Cinque Gallery exhibition of Ademola Olugebefola by John Yau.
Olugebefola has vivid memories of being trained in various printmaking techniques by Blackburn himself. He speaks of his Orionic Etchings Suite "Conceptualized, cre- ated and printed, at the Bob Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in winter-spring of 1971. The thirteen (13) piece suite was realized under maestro Blackburn's guidance - as it was my first attempt at the etching medium - It was a challenging, exciting and fascinating "adventure" as Bob encouraged and introduced me to a variety of etching techniques - such as aquatint, mezzotint, drypoint, sugar-lift etc. I experimented with them all! - using hard and soft 'ground' in the creation of various size plates." Impressions of which are prominently in the permanent collection of The Studio Museum.
This assemblage of artists and their prints represents only a snapshot of the work in the Blackburn Collection. More significantly the selection speaks only in a small way of the community of students, colleagues, collaborators and personal friendships that attest to the enduring vision of the Printmaking Workshop's founder Robert Blackburn.
