ReSOURCE

Artists

Eselean Henderson
October 5, 2024
Eselean Henderson. Untitled, 1970s. Stoneware, 9” (H) x 12” (Diameter). Permanent Collection of the South Side Community Art Center.

Eselean Henderson

Eselean Henderson (1917-2004) was born in Ruston, Louisiana and moved to Chicago as a child with her family. Following the death of both parents, the children were raised by her mother’s youngest sister. She graduated from Lindblom High School and in 1941 earned a bachelor’s degree in physical education from George Williams College, where she also studied sculpture and drawing. Henderson served as an educator in Chicago Public Schools for 10 years and taught at Doolittle Elementary before teaching at Phillips, DuSable, and Farragut High Schools. After retiring from teaching, Henderson returned to the study of ceramics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and went on to have a nearly 40-year career, exhibiting her work nationally in museums and galleries. Her sustained commitment to education and creativity for underserved youth brought her to Urban Gateways, where she worked for 8 years (1977-1985), the Field Museum, where she worked as a docent for 8 years, and the West Suburban Artists Guild and the South Side Community Art Center where she also taught classes. Her stoneware pottery has been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, and the State Museum in Springfield, Illinois. Referred to as the “Clay Lady” by her students and colleagues, Henderson was devoted to exposing Black communities to the art of clay and the endless possibilities that could be realized through pottery.

 

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Aki (Donald Baker Sr.)
Bethany Collins
Michael Qualls
Robert A. Ferris
Theaster Gates
Fannie Mae Robinson

MIXED MEDIA AND STILL LIFE

Works in EMERGENCE are diverse in their subject matter and media, but a few themes reappear throughout. Working in abstraction or in the traditionally peaceful genre of still life, artists like William Carter, Allen Stringfellow, and Jonathan Green express themes of interiority or sociability, history or modernity. Notably, Stringfellow and Ralph Arnold both experimented with media and materials and worked extensively in collage, which allowed them to combine abstract design, figurative imagery, and on occasion political ideas.

Viewers typically expect Black artists to focus on particular aspects of their social and political identities within their work. Where might those expectations come from? Still life, abstraction, and collage may express many different things about artists’ interior lives and their visual and social observation, whether connected to public manifestations of identity or not.

William Carter’s mid-century still life Untitled presents a group of vibrantly colored bottles that invite the viewer’s gaze, set against a similarly colorful background with floral elements like grapes and leaves. They give evidence of conviviality and might be interpreted as symbols of social gatherings, but they could also just be a collection of pleasing forms. We might put Carter’s still life in dialogue with that of Jonathan Green, who became close friends with Carter while living in Chicago. Green’s close-up view of an eloquently simple composition presents oranges, a pear, and a lemon in front of two vessels. Works like this piece call the viewer to examine the objects the artist chose to include, to consider how they interact with each other like bodies in space, and to reflect on their meaning within the traditional genre of still life painting.

Collage might suggest the piecing together of identity from different components that might not usually coexist, giving room for more expansive imaginations of meaning than a straightforward representational image might allow. It could also just be an inventive way of combining colors, shapes, and textures. Allen Stringfellow’s Untitled, a collage from 1962, brings familiar motifs from still life—fruit and flowers, desserts and glassware—together with imagery of artist’s models and performers. Layered with paint and tissue paper that frustrate the viewer’s attempt to get clarity on the subject matter, the bursts of form and colors hint at the splashy abstraction of Stringfellow’s untitled, textured painting made from house paint and particulate on cardboard. Here the artist tests commonly found materials to create new textures and plays with the creation of colors and finishes that diverge from “Western” academic painting methods.

In The Waiting, Arnold constructs a large collage from different paper components, lace, and paint. In the piece, elements of European and African art are placed in dialogue with one another, while some figures appear alone and isolated, others in large groups. Without giving easy answers, Arnold implies questions about social issues. Who is waiting, and for what? In his Love Sign II, which bears the words “Love is Universal,” Arnold asserts the equal validity of all types of romantic affection and love, utilizing collage to convey a more straightforward political message.