Sedrick Huckaby: Portraits

This project documents two residential blocks. One block is located in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Haskell Place in a neighborhood adjoining historic Greenwood. The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre desecrated the Greenwood neighborhood—one of the most prosperous African American communities in the early 20th century. The other residential block is located on St. Charles Street in the town of Greenwood, Mississippi—the namesake of the district in Tulsa and the birthplace of my father.

For this project I traveled to both locations, documented these city blocks, and framed them together as a way to visually tie the two locations together.

The images are printed onto cotton fabric and framed in embroidery hoops hinged together, to speak to the bifold frames people displayed of loved ones in their homes. At its most basic level, this project is about home and connectedness. The work speaks to the desire for a people to build a home of their own, the struggles that hinder the “American Dream” for far too many of its citizens, and a present nostalgia (living in a state that is linked heavily to the past).

Letitia Huckaby

Sedrick Huckaby
Antwone’s Family, 2016
oil on panel, oil on canvas, and oil on hardboard
13 1/2 x 58 inches installed
Sedrick Huckaby
Carry, Aunt Carry, Nosy, 2013
Oil on canvas
72h x 48w inches
Sedrick Huckaby
Jeanette, Net, Nanna, 2013
Oil on canvas
72h x 48w inches
Sedrick Huckaby
Mary, Mary-Lu, Missionary Parker, 2013
Oil on canvas
72h x 48w x 3d inches
Sedrick Huckaby’s paintings, drawings, and sculpture metaphorically express universal themes of faith, family, community, and heritage. Huckaby focuses on the subjects of quilts and portraits in his quest to glorify everyday people.  Huckaby states, “I believe my paintings are done in a language more closely in tune with my soul than the language of my tongue.” Huckaby is known for his monumental scale of painting, with his largest painting thus far being his 80 foot long, four-part painting, A Love Supreme, painted over a period of eight years, for which Huckaby was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Huckaby is also the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, an honorable mention award winner in the 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition and a 2019 finalist. Additionally, he is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell foundation grant, Elizabeth Greenshield Award, and was the Texas State Artist for 2018. After earning a BFA at Boston University in 1997, and an MFA from Yale University in 1999, he 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. Since returning home, he 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; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; 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. He is married to artist Letitia Huckaby and is the father of three children, Rising Sun, Halle Lujah and Rhema Rain Huckaby.
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