Society's Impact on Inspiration

     On March 11, 2021, CSU Dominguez Hills hosted an Artist Talk Webinar featuring a conversation between curator and art historian Valerie Cassel Oliver and artist Howardena Pindell. Cassel Oliver asked questions about Pindell’s life and work. She became interested in the arts through her third-grade teacher, who encouraged her to continue drawing, and her parents, who helped her try out different styles. Growing up, Pindell had many encounters with racism. Not only was she the only person of color in her MFA program (Cassel Oliver mentioned that Pindell appears to be the first black woman to graduate from Yale University), but she also faced discrimination from peers and parents of friends. Indeed, she recalled that some of the students’ parents attempted to bribe the University to remove her from being a professor. These experiences inform the purpose and intentions behind her creations. In her artworks, we see lengthy metaphors of destruction and reconstruction. She is also often political and addresses issues on racism, feminism, slavery, violence, and exploitation. Cassel Oliver noted the artist’s strong sense of justice and advocacy in the arts, which gives her work a good sense of duality.

Her most recent exhibition, for example, Rope/Fire/Water (2020), shown at The Shed in New York, was inspired by her past life events. (https://theshed.org/program/143-howardena-pindell-rope-fire-water) She vividly remembers a time that she was eating dinner with a friend’s family. She recalls being surrounded by white individuals, seeing a picture of a burning man getting lynched in a magazine placed on the table, and smelling the air of the burning BBQ meat they were about to eat.

Understandably, the show consists of gruesome scenes depicting racism, violence, police brutality, and more. In her artworks, she uses her unjust life experiences as inspiration to seek out equality and bring awareness to problematic events. This exhibition holds tribute to John Lewis, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Rope, Fire, Water, 2020, also includes a list of names, places, and events that occurred where people were burned down and/or bombed.

Through her works, she shares stories of the history of African American lives, represented along with other people of color. Pindell shows her critical thinking by ending the show with a seemingly peaceful and beautiful image, to prevent leaving her viewers in utter shock. Four Little Girls (2020) leaves the viewer with some type of memorial remembrance for the deaths that occurred in the white supremacist terror bombing at a church in 1963. (https://www.theartnewspaper.com/review/howardena-pindell-rope-fire-water) She is able to encapsulate the way she works with her sublime messages rooted in truth and history.

Pindell’s works focus on bringing awareness to difficult issues such as racism in the US, but they also present explorations on texture, color, and the process of art-making. The artist is drawn to new materials causing her work to constantly change. Initially, she had to experiment with acrylics because she discovered an allergy to oil paint. In the late 1960s-1970s, she also experimented with a hole punch used as a tool to make different textures. Pindell concluded by stating she would like to leave a legacy in writing and education as well as in art and painting.

She urges young artists to make their works last, therefore she encourages oil painting on canvas rather than digital art because it has been around for much longer than technology. She also advised young artists to know who to trust, to be cautious of who/where they give their art, and to who they share their process and ideas with.