Harvey B. Gantt Center

 

          Last Friday we visited the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture. The building sits adjacent to the Mint in one of the more dense areas of uptown Charlotte. The history of the museum is interesting enough, currently residing in it’s third location.

            As far as the gallery, most of the pieces were two-dimensional paintings, drawings or collages. They tended to be centered a little below my eye level and the rooms were lit enough to see, although the gallery rooms were dim. The information about the art was interesting, because it served to pinpoint what era the pieces were from and what they represented.

            Most of the pieces were not in complete relation apart from having been collected by the Hewitts. There were rooms devoted to certain artists, like Grigsby or the modern pop-artist’s pieces which sat in the hallways. One of the most surprising things about the gallery was the variety of styles which were intertwined, even from an individual artist.

            The first piece I really liked was from the Hewitt Collection, a piece titled Family Tree by Alvin C Hollingsworth. It sits somewhere between an impressionism piece and a expressionism piece. A rough burnt orange and faded yellow background sets the scene for a mountain of many unfinished people which hold up a single man with his arms stretched out at the top.

            Arms reach out in various places along the “tree” representing branches, some holding fruit. A few people have colored clothing, a blue shirt, green shorts, and a red dress. A child in a blue shirt is standing reaching for fruit about halfway up the tree. All of this sits in focus from a perspective of what looks like inner-city housing, buildings, and lampposts.

            I think I’ve mentioned the mission trips I took to Jamaica before, but it did have a profound impact on my life. This reminded me of the same place again. I'm not sure what the exact message the artist was trying to convey, whether it was literal or figurative, but the Jamaicans I met seemed to be so much more aware of surrounding oneself with family and one’s neighbors. It’s a great thing to have a community that is built as a support system; your family and those you think of as family.

            As far as greater connections, I think it’s important to mention that we all did come from the same place, no matter what you believe. We’re all family. In the end we are all made of skin and bones and bleed red. Something that is so easily forgotten yet so important seems like such a cliche for a painting, but there’s a reason it might be cliche.

            We are really the products of people who come before us. Time and time again we’re a product of generations and generations of influence. I am made from so many small parts of my ancestors which make me uniquely me, all of them coming together at this point in time. So in a greater concept, those who helped us get where we are not only are around us but a part of our past.

            The unfinished characters and the white spots on the finished piece also conveys a message. I normally don’t like reading too much into those types of details, but it seems like it wasn’t the subjects that were the most important part of the picture but rather the intention. The message. The tree, created through support and community exists and is easily recognizable while thing that are easy to get caught up on, people and specific details, are not prominent.

            Larger themes can be easily drawn out of the piece, like constant struggles and war, how important family is, and general warmth of spirit. While I think they are all important and wonderful things to take from the piece, I took the latter from the piece. Between the colors and happiness in the poses of the characters, a warmth of spirit resides in the piece, something that I enjoy feeling from this piece.

            The second piece I chose was in the last gallery we visited. I forgot what connected the pieces in that gallery but Willie Little’s Door To American Culture was very interesting. The whole piece is a combination of three old, heavy wooden doors, one painted on and the other two installed with fixtures on them.

            I’ll move from left to right describing the doors. The left one, not perfectly rectangular had three things on it. In the middle was a open-face birdhouse with a single large skeleton key in it. There were also two pictures pasted on the upper part, but I honestly don’t remember what they were and I can’t tell from the picture. The middle door had a painting of an African-American woman in a faded white dress with long tapered sleeves and a high collar. There is a single nail which breaks the two-dimensional plain, placed at an angle into the left side of the woman’s neck. The door has a green background which has heavy wear on the outsides, and the woman’s portrait fades off the door around her thighs.

            The right door had five fixtures on it, all heavily worn. The middle had a similar open-face birdhouse like the first had but with multiple keys in it. There are also heavily worn door knobs, two above and below the birdhouse, which are the old metal skeleton-key type.

            Personally I enjoy unusual canvases, exactly like this. The pain alone on an old wooden door, with cracks, crevices, and knots must have been tough to paint on not to mention the weight of the thick doors. The detail in the birdhouses’s background, placement, and hanging of the nails inside was really neat.

            Most of the parts and the doors themselves were antiqued, whether naturally or artificially, which made it more of a unique piece. The wear shows on middle door against the paint and heavily on the bottom of the right door.

            Personally it’s canvas is so unusual that I'm sure it means something, I’m just not sure what. Door To American Culture may link historical doors against slavery or current culture, both feasible outcomes. It’s interesting to see a canvas being more than just a base for the art as well as the mix of art forms.

            As the title states, there’s definitely more about this piece than just the art. There are many things you can take from the piece, one of the boldest statements is that the enslavement and murder of so many African-Americans opened the door for current American culture. That includes themes of the disenfranchisement of African-Americans and slavery used to build the country.

            I enjoyed going to the Harvey B. Gantt Center, although I was a bit overwhelmed in their rooms. While I realize they are trying to be both an art museum and a history museum in the same breathe, it would be good to organize the museum in that way. While I realize most of the art falls in both categories, the amount and size of the pictures made it hard to really appreciate individual pieces although it is easy to grasp the historical magnitude of it all.