African-American Quilting Traditions
The tapestry of art is woven with history, a fact that Sedrick Huckaby celebrates in his own art, which is inspired by his family, faith, and heritage. Huckaby’s canvases and works on paper depicting African-American quilting traditions recently were part of a two-person show at The Gallery at UT Arlington. “Sometimes I see the quilts as the African-American woman’s jazz—a circle of women conversing, improvising, and making rhythmic beauty together,” says the visiting assistant professor of art. “There is a great joy in doing these works because I am one of the few people in the world who could say he is doing a jam session with Grandma.” Huckaby, who has won the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, the Lewis Comfort Tiffany Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship Award, achieves with his art what most every artist seeks: to connect individual experience to a greater collective truth. “I’m always trying to relate personal concerns with larger, universal ones. So many of these pieces have personal, social, and spiritual implications.”
