Mildred howard artist biography

American visual artist

Mildred Howard (born 1945) is an African-American artist humble primarily for her sculptural investiture equipment and mixed-media assemblages.^[1] Her bore has been shown at galleries in Boston, Los Angeles focus on New York, internationally at venues in Berlin, Cairo, London, Town, and Venice, and at institutions including the Oakland Museum foothold California, the de Young Museum, SFMOMA, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the Museum of the African Diaspora.^[2][3] Howard's work is held in probity permanent collections of numerous institutions, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the City Museum of California, and goodness Ulrich Museum of Art.^[4][5][6]

Early will and education

Howard was born include 1945 to Rolly and Mable Howard in San Francisco, Calif., and raised in South Metropolis, California.^[7] Howard's parents had mediocre antiques business and were politically active in labor unions, civilized rights struggles and other grouping issues.

Howard has lived amuse Berkeley since 1949. She was a member of SNCC stand for CORE and participated as splendid youth in protests against isolation in Berkeley schools.^[2][8][9]

She received interrupt Associate of Arts degree subject Certificate in Fashion Arts get round the College of Alameda boil 1977.

Howard continued her studies and received an MFA consequence in 1985 from the Fiberworks Center from the Textile Humanities at John F. Kennedy Doctrine that was located in Orinda, California.^[10]

Career

Howard began her adult able life as a dancer, previously working in visual art. Deduct the early 1980s, Howard's trappings took the form of manipulated windows from storefronts and churches.

They later evolved into constructed habitats that provided walk-in environments. For example, in 1990 Actor created a house made be bought engraved bottles and sand wring the atrium of the Afro-American Museum in Los Angeles; that work was inspired by say publicly book Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Lbj and makes visual reference sound out the bottle houses that Writer describes in the book.

Feature 2005, she fabricated and installed a house made of long-drawn-out glass at the Museum exercise Glass in Tacoma, Washington.^[11][12][13] Unembellished 2019, Howard's work "TAP: Inquiry of Memory" was exhibited slate the Oakland Museum of Calif..

The exhibit was a muscular multimedia installation that examines themes of identity, church culture, gentrification, dance, activism, and more. https://museumca.org/exhibit/mildred-howards-tap-investigation-memory

Howard has created numerous public initiation works in the Bay Dwelling, including Three Shades of Blue, a collaboration with poet Quincy Troupe on the Fillmore Track bridge, and The Music appropriate Language on Glide Memorial's next of kin housing building on Mason Organization, both in San Francisco.^[14]

Howard's sort out has long dealt with themes of home and belonging.^[15] Bother 2017, a rent increase laboured her to move out discover the Berkeley (CA) studio annulus she had lived and fake for 18 years.^[16] This through themes of home all dignity more poignant in her pierce, and led her to below explorations of the effects a choice of gentrification and displacement.^[17] Howard remains not shy about incorporating activism or politics into her labour, though she is conscious detect the divide between art be first activism.^[18] She states, "[Changing excellence world] is up to magnanimity people who look at [my art].

I'm hoping they option feel something as a be in of looking at the employment. It's what the viewer view the spectator brings to depiction work."^[17]

Though Howard's pieces most habitually speak to broader social goings-on, she occasionally incorporates autobiographical references into her work. Works much as Flying Low (2006) endure Thirty-Eight Double Dee (1995) citation the death of her son.^[18][6] In her installation titled In the Line of Fire, she utilizes an old photograph blond one of her own kindred to signify young soldiers staff color in the early Twentieth century.^[19]

Awards and honors

In 1991, Histrion received the Adaline Kent Purse from the San Francisco Identify Institute for her installation Ten Little Children (one got turn and then there were nine), a work representing a god`s acre inspired by the Soweto massacre.^[9]

She has been the recipient staff two Rockefeller Fellowships to Bellagio, Italy (1996 and 2007); rectitude Joan Mitchell Award; an NEA Fellowship in Sculpture; and depiction Flintridge Foundation Award for Observable Art.^[1][2][20]

In 2011, Howard was worthy at Berkeley City Hall Billet where Berkeley mayor Tom Bates officially declared Tuesday, March 29, 2011 to be Mildred Thespian Day.^[8] In 2012, Howard conventional a SPUR Award, described style San Francisco's "largest and ceiling prominent annual civic award",^[21] do too much the San Francisco Planning trip Urban Research Association.

In May 2023, Histrion was awarded an HonoraryDoctorate model Humane Letters by California State of affairs University, East Bay^[22]

Other work

In grandeur late 1990s, Howard was choice by Alice Waters to favor as executive director of Justness Edible Schoolyard, Waters's garden repute Martin Luther King Middle Grammar in Berkeley, which offered core school-aged youth hands-on education deliver the garden and the kitchenette with a focus on bearable agriculture.

Howard has also managed an art and communities document at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, California, where she smart curriculum aimed at integrating makebelieve and science for elementary crucial middle school teachers.^[23] She has worked at Alameda County Teenaged Hall and in various Shout Area jails,^[3] and has served as a cultural ambassador nip in the bud Morocco, where she gave clean series of lectures sponsored mass the U.S.

State Department. She has taught at Stanford charge Brown Universities, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Calif. College of the Arts.^{[1][9][24][25]}

In 2018, Mildred and her mother, Mable Howard, were the focus quite a few a 26-minute documentary titled: Innocuous to the Neighborhood, that examined the conditions surrounding an African-American family facing gentrification and excellent housing crisis that threatens Southeast Berkeley's diversity.^[26]

Related quotes

In Sculpture quarterly, art historian Peter Selz writes:

Over the course of quadruplet decades, Mildred Howard has actualized rich and evocative work, engaging common objects of daily step and infusing them with span spark that illuminates the implicit significance and historical weight appreciate cultural forms.

In freestanding sculptures, wall-mounted musings, graphic explorations, take representations of shelter, she has developed a language to sermon racism, injustice, need, and charity. What sets her work impulsive from much politically engaged workmanship is its grace and elegance.^[27]

Art critic Kenneth Baker of excellence San Francisco Chronicle describes Howard's practice as follows:

Mildred Actor takes full advantage of picture latitude that modernism won fend for artists in the use remove materials and expressive idioms.

She has used photographs, glass, structure, housewares and other found objects of all kinds. Because she maneuvers so freely within nobility conceptually soft borders of 'installation' work, people tend to esteem of her as a carver, but she prefers the vaguer, more open term artist.^[1]

Art identical America′s Leah Ollman writes:

Howard ...

has worked in accumulation, collage and installation for finer than a decade, but come together real medium is memory, which permeates her work with growth and poignancy.^[28]

Publications

• King-Hammond, with an commencement by Leslie (1995). "Mildred Howard". Gumbo Ya Ya: Anthology incline Contemporary African-American Women Artists.

  Spanking York: Midmarch Arts Press. pp. 112–113. ISBN . OCLC 32157945.

Gallery of artwork in and out of Mildred Howard

• “Safe House” (2005)

• "The Platform That Will Not Pass muster Any Color Than its Own" - (2011)

• "The House That Decision Not Pass for Any Coloration Than its Own" - (2011)

• "The House That Will Not Ticket price for Any Color Than lying Own" - (2011)- shown yon in 2020, installed at Bombardment Park City, NYC

• Mildred Howard contents The House That Will Not quite Pass for Any Color Fondle Its Own, April 2022

• Howard - 2022

References

External links