Letitia Huckaby and Sedrick Huckaby

Welcome

Kinfolk House
March 4 – April 24, 2022

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As a collaborative project space, Kinfolk House presents more than art exhibitions or pairings of artists, it intends to foster a community based on dialogues between visual artists and creatives, including writers, muscians, dancers, and others. The first project, Welcome, is a two-person exhibiton of new work by Letitia Huckaby and Sedrick Huckaby which grounds the space in family, tradition, and legacy through the inspiration and presence of Sedrick’s grandmother, Hallie Beatrice Carpenter, whose maiden name was Welcome.

Carpenter, known as Big Momma, was the matriarch of the family and left a lasting legacy. She had the unique ability to bring people together from the neighborhood and beyond, always making them feel at home. Though not an artist herself, she expressed her creativity through textiles, fashion, and music. Assisted by family, the Huckabys have selected a collection of memorabilia and sound recordings to exhibit alongside their own work as a part of the interactive nature of the environment.

In conversation with Big Momma, the Huckabys explore the past and how it shapes the present as well as the future. The artists point to the everlasting legacy of the matriarch of their family and how her spirit continues to reside in this home and with the many people who knew her. Through this connection to family and community, the Huckabys hope to illiumunate the ways in which Big Momma’s conviction that all are welcome remains true.

Letitia Huckaby’s large-scale landscapes investigate places connected to Carpenter’s past. Big Momma moved from her hometown Weimer, Texas to Fort Worth with her family sometime between the 1930 and 1940 census, but her children and grandchildren never returned to the places she was from.

Letitia takes a journey, documenting spaces from Weimer to Waco along Highway 77 and then from Waco to Fort Worth along interstate 35 and brings that ancestral memory back to Big Momma’s home. Printed on fabric, some of these images are displayed in oval hoops while others are backed by found quilts. These photographs are also embroidered with thread—a biblical reference to birthright, bloodlines, and sacrifice. The threaded text explores the word “welcome” in its various forms.

Letitia Huckaby has a degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma, a BFA from the Art Institute of Boston in photography and her Master’s degree from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. Huckaby is recipient of the 2022 Texas Artist of the Year from the Art League of Houson.  Huckaby has exhibited the Tyler Museum of Art, The Studio School of Harlem, the Camden Palace Hotel in Cork City, Ireland, and the Texas Biennial at Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum. Her work is included in several prestigious collections; the Library of Congress, the McNay Art Museum, the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, and the Samella Lewis Contemporary Art Collection at Scripps College in Claremont, California. Huckaby was a featured artist in MAP2020: The Further We Roll, The More We Gain at the Amon Carter Museum and State of the Art 2020 at The Momentary and Crystal Bridges Museum, both opened in the spring of 2020. Huckaby was also a Fall 2020 Artist in Residence at ArtPace.

Sedrick Huckaby’s paintings, drawings, and sculpture metaphorically express universal themes of faith, family, community, and heritage. A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Huckaby received his BFA from Boston Univeristy and his MFA from Yale University.  He has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship and is a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, as well as a 2022- 2023 Fulbright Scholar. In addition, Huckaby was an honorable mention award winner in the 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition and a 2019 finalist. Other recognition includes a Joan Mitchell foundation grant, Elizabeth Greenshield Award, and was the Texas State Artist for 2018. In 1999, the artist participated in the Provencetown Fine Arts Work Center residency and traveled the U.S. and Europe studying old master paintings. When he returned to the U.S., Huckaby settled into his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, where he was born in 1975. Huckaby has been invited to participate in a number of residencies and fellowships including a Davison Family Fellowship from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Elaine De Kooning House Residency, and the Art for Change Residency in New Delhi, India. Huckaby’s work has entered the permanent collections of numerous museums and institutions including the American Embassy in Namibia; Amon Carter Museum of American Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, CT; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art.