Legacies of Making
In our studio visit with Charlie Newton, the artist expounds on the legacy of everyday Black cultural production that has inspired his artistic practice. Referencing quilt-making among a plethora of other crafts and practices, Newton explains how the act of making provides a sense of identity, community, and purpose. What might it look like for you to make a creative action that is inspired by existing crafts, practices, or legacies from your own family and community experiences?
Activity Supplies:
Blank Sheet of Paper
Pencil or Pen
Several Colors of a Medium of Choice
Activity Steps:
In your home or living space, identify one object or documentation of an object that was made by a family member, friend, or relative. It can be as simple as a small craft or frame, or as grand and elaborate as a quilt.
Sit with this object and on a blank sheet of paper, make a list of thoughts, feelings, memories, and responses you have when contemplating this object. You can write from stream-of-consciousness or with as much structure as you like. Try to write for at least five minutes.
After your writing, gather your media in color and color your sheet of notes however you feel inspired. Use the curves and spaces between the text as inspiration. Work on this for at least 10 minutes. Upon completion, reflect. How do you see yourself reflected in the response to the object?
Visit Clip:
About Charlie:
Charlie Newton began drawing at the age of five years old. "I saw the light of God coming through the window when I saw a drawn picture for the first time in my life. From then on I was hooked" he exclaims. Having received his BA from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and his MFA from Old Dominion University and Norfolk State University Newton also studied with the University of Georgia's Studies Abroad Program in Cortona Italy. Since 1986 Newton has exhibited in London, Italy, New York, New Jersey, Washington, DC, Richmond Virginia, and numerous galleries in the South East including The Red Clay Survey, Huntsville Museum and Boundless Expressions, H. Lee Moffit Center, Tampa, Florida. His work is represented in private and public collections in the US and abroad including The Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN, The College of St. Elizabeth, Morristown, NJ, Sun Trust Bank, Chattanooga, TN, Wallace H. Kuralt Center, Charlotte, NC and The Chattanooga African American Museum, Chattanooga, TN. In 2012 Mr. Newton and his wife painter Iantha Newton founded SPLASH a free art school for urban youth. Mr. Newton maintains his art studio where he paints full time in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
https://artistcharlienewton.com/about.php
https://splashyouthartsworkshop.org/
ABOUT FOREVER PAINTING:
If all the paintings that have ever been made were compressed on to one canvas; every mark and brushstroke continuous, what would be its content, its sum total? What would this new, amalgamation say or describe or depict? This canvas would capture the past, the present, the future, as new marks are made they are added to the heap, an archive of perpetual presents. So Forever-Painting doesn’t care about asserting painting’s relevance, which signifies its importance, its gravity in that historical moment. Instead, these works attempt, move toward, and seek, totality, a genesis, that in its becoming defines both wholes and parts as not that what they seem, and definitely not what they are.