Black History Month: Deborah Roberts
For Black History Month, I thought I'd share some of the visual and literary artists who inspire me. In no particular order, let's start with:
Artist Deborah Roberts with her work in London. Photo credit: Anna Watson/ Alamy/ The Guardian
Roberts is a collage artist out of Austin, Texas. She's known for creating life-sized and larger-than-life-sized pieces "critiquing perceptions of ideal beauty," as she says in her artist statement. I love her work for so many reasons, but the top two are:
she's a mixed-media collage artist whose work is unmistakably fine art
she talks about race in ways that are simultaneously beautiful and devastating.
Her "Nessun Dorma" series in particular stays with me. It centers around George Stinney Jr., a 14 year old Black child convicted and executed for murder in 1944. Although his conviction was vacated (70 years later) as an unfair trial, he remains the youngest American ever executed by the state.
Every weekday I’ll post a new artist, so stay tuned…