Public Art By Artists of Color

A “self-taught folk artist” whose work is rooted in memories of life as experienced by Charlotte’s African-American community during the era of “Jim Crow” racial segregation in the American South, Ashford’s work incorporates a mix of materials that often depict actual real-life events and remembrances, individuals and communities with vibrant detail and emotion. 

A native North Carolinian, noted painter Tommie Robinson is largely self-taught. His work has been featured in newspapers and magazines such as Art News and Watercolor Magazine. He has been commissioned for both corporate and public artworks, some of which are located in Charlotte, at the Adams Service Center, West Boulevard Branch Library, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg ABC Board offices.

Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, Nico Amortegui has lived and worked in the United States since the late 1990s. His current artistic foci include large-scale paintings on canvas or wood panels, sculpting and wood-working with found objects.  His work is often full of unapologetic color and is a direct product of his expressed energy.

In 1979, an advertising career move to Atlanta gave Michele Tejuola Turner a new awareness of African culture that was flourishing throughout the city. Those African cultural experiences began to mold her new outlook on life and art through African history, Griot storytelling, African drumming and dancing, African crafts, and performing artists.

Po Shu Wang is a visual artist born in Hong Kong, and educated in Rome, Italy. He creates site-specific work under the name Living Lenses in collaboration with his wife, Louise Bertelsen, who died in 2013. Their public artworks are, in their own words, "focused on harnessing the dynamic energy of the project site encountered, to directly fuel the artwork.” Their artworks are created as tangible mechanisms, through which the public can explore hidden aspects of their environment, while they can also actively evolve the content of the artwork.”

Born in Gaston, NC, much of Jim Biggers' art reflects his African heritage, working in a variety of media, with special emphasis on painting, drawing and monoprints. His later work derived from his interests in mythology and sacred geometry, which is the study of the connection between symbolic meanings in nature’s geometric shapes.

Jackie Chang (American, b. 1963, Taiwan) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.  She is most noted for her public art works.  Chang has completed a number of permanent and temporary art projects around the nation. Roberta Smith, New York Times  arts critic, recently called Chang's art project for a New York subway station as "exceptional public art." 

Durham-based   public   artist,  David   Wilson,   was   born   and   raised   in   Clarksburg,   WV,   and  earned  his  BFA  from  Hampton  University.  While at Hampton,  he  received  tutelage  in  the  creation  of  public  art  under  John  Biggers  and  Africobra  artist,  James  Philips.  A  primary driver  in  his  public  works  is  creation  for  interpretation  by  all  with  an  overall  goal to foster introspection, communication, and provide a platform for education. Wilson   employs   his   background   in  design, sculpture,   and   public   art,   to   create   site-specific  work  that  explores  the  social,  historical,  and  functional  context  of  the  site, as well as the architectural and urban phenomology of the space. 

Chandra Cox is a practicing artist, image-maker who works in a range of mediums from oil, acrylic to digital media. Her work has been presented in numerous museums and galleries around the country such as the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Her artworks in public collections include NC State University, North Carolina Central University and the University Of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

A native of Savannah, Ga.,  Reddy was an artist, poet, activist and musician whose mixed-media paintings combined acrylics with natural materials including paper, wood and fabric.  He co-founded  Black Student Union and the African and Afro-American Studies Department at UNC Charlotte. “I am a being whose connection is associated with my ancestry — an African origin,” he told Qcitymetro.com. “My blackness, my African-ness, my color is infused in every pore of my being. The source of the art comes from me.”

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Juan Logan now lives and works in Belmont, North Carolina. Logan’s artworks address subjects relevant to the American experience. At once abstract and representational, his paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, and videos address the interconnections of race, place, and power. They make visible how hierarchical relations and social stereotypes shape individuals, institutions, and the material and mental landscapes of contemporary life.

Chicago artist Richard Hunt is one of the most important sculptors of our time.  He shares the distinction with his friend, the late Romare Bearden of being the first two African-American artists to have solo exhibitions at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1971.