Joyce Owens - Heart and Hand (2015) Acrylic on wood with beads and metal

In honor of Black History Month, Maséqua Myers, Executive Director of the South Side Community Art Center, has curated a small series of images from the Art Center’s collection to celebrate African-American history, African-American art, and the South Side Community Art Center’s role in preserving that legacy.

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Joyce Owens is a graduate of Howard University for her undergraduate degree; her master’s was at Yale University. [Until recently she was] a professor of art at Chicago State University. She works with oil on canvas, but the piece we’re talking about here is her sculpture, which is wood and metal. And what she does is take; the reason why I love her is because she takes what some people might call trash, or different objects that are thrown away, and creates the art that we see. So she’ll take pieces of wood that have been thrown out. She’ll find buttons and steal pieces of nails and thumbtacks—all these types of what someone has thrown away and can’t use—and create this beautiful piece of artwork and sculpture, and that’s one of the reasons why I chose her. (Maséqua Myers)

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