Sarai Sherman was about 26 years old when she exhibited a painting called “Hericane Time” in an art show at Philadelphia’s Pyramid Club back in 1948. I found her name and the piece listed in…
The distinct art of Sarai Sherman
Posted in Art
Category: Art
Somewhere an elephant or rhinoceros is missing a foot, a fox is missing a mate, a piranha is not terrorizing other fish, and a boar is not out scavenging for its supper. What was once alive…
A stack of paintings by Haitian artists
Posted in Art
The auction house was cold as usual as I walked through the door despite a heater blasting full force near the front. The auctioneer had threatened a few times to take his auction elsewhere to escape this freezer…
The ceramic art of Lisa Larson
Posted in Art
The little boy and girl looked so demure and playful as they stood there on the auction table. Their innocent faces were almost apologetic as they held white and blue petal flowers seemingly for someone special. I didn’t…
A couple years ago, I was browsing the art offerings at one of my regular auction houses when I spotted a watercolor saturated with the color orange. Among the dense bright color were a young…
African American natural hair as art
Posted in African American women, Art, and Hair
Sonya Clark is a fiber artist who uses her own hair as her medium. She weaves human hair – black women’s natural hair – onto canvases, the backs of chairs, into jewelry and even mixing it…
The red candy-striped fingernails were transfixing. They held me in place there in the auction house, willing me to stop my casual stroll among the other artwork and pay attention to them. If that was…
The prints on the picture racks at the auction house had a decidedly 1960s look. They were intriguing, so I answered their call and drew closer for a better view. The images in some of the…
Artist Hughie Lee-Smith would be smiling right now, I thought as I watched phone bidders wrangling over one of his paintings at the Swann Auction Galleries’ sale of African American fine art this week. It…
Tips for the new art collector
Posted in Art
When I started collecting African American art, the first piece I bought was a signed and numbered print by a Washington, DC, artist named John Anderson. I didn’t know much about who to collect and what…