COMMUNITY Arts & Music American experience in the 20th century with some influence from Mexican reality. This focus began while she was at the University of Iowa, where she was encouraged to depict what she knew best. Her thesis was the sculpture Mother and Child (1939), which won first prize at the American Negro Exposition in Chicago in 1940. Elizabeth Catlett subjects range from sensitive maternal images to confrontational symbols of Black Power, and portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriet Tubman and writer Phyllis Wheatley, as she believed that art can play a role in the construction of transnational and ethnic identity. Her bestknown works depict black women as strong and maternal. The women are voluptuous, with broad hips and shoulders, in positions of power and confidence, often with torsos thrust forward to show attitude. Faces tend to be masklike, generally upturned. Mother and Child (1939) shows a young woman with very short hair and features similar to that of a Gabon mask. Her linocut seriesThe Black Woman Speaks, is among the first graphic series in Western art to depict the image of the American black woman as a heroic and complex human being. Her work was influenced by the Harlem Renaissance movement and the Chicago Black Renaissance in the 1940s and reinforced in the 1960s and 1970s with the influence of the Black Power, Black Arts Movement and feminism. Elizabeth Catlett was more concerned in the social messages of her work than in pure aesthetics. “I have always wanted my art to service my people – to reflect us, to relate to us, to stimulate us, to make us aware of our potential.” . . . .”I don’t think art can change things,” Catlett said: “I think writing can do more. But art can prepare people for change, it can be educational and persuasive in people’s thinking.” Catlett also acknowledged her artistic contributions as influencing younger black women. She relayed that being a black woman sculptor “before was unthinkable. ... There were very few black women sculptors – maybe five or six – and they all have very tough circumstances to overcome. You can be black, a woman, a sculptor, a print-maker, a teacher, a mother, a grandmother, and keep a house. It takes a lot of doing, but you can do it. All you have to do is decide to do it.” Early life Catlett was born and raised in Washington, D.C. Both her mother and father were the children of freed slaves, and her grandmother told her stories about the capture of blacks in Africa and the hardships of plantation life. Catlett was the youngest of three children. Both of her parents worked in education; her mother was a truant officer and her father taught in Tuskegee University, the then D.C. public school system. Her father died before she was born, leaving her mother to hold several jobs to support the household. Catlett’s interest in art began early. As a child she became fascinated by a wood carving of a bird that her
35 Publizr Home