that time of year

We’re nearing the end of the semester, which means I have a ton of grading to do and my students are thinking about their final art project. I made a demo this morning, drawing on a quote from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, which was repeated in Percival Everett’s satirical novel Erasure: “How does it feel to be free of your illusions?” I wanted to created a kaleidoscopic effect and largely failed but at least they’ll see how symbols can be teased from the texts. My nieces in Nova Scotia made some beautiful self-portraits for our Mickalene Project. You remember I bought a giraffe-print fedora, photographed myself, and then added glitter and patterned paper to mimic the jeweled portraits by Mickalene Thomas. I’m taking my students to see her work next week, and hope they’ll also appreciate the majestic portraits of black men painted by Kehinde Wiley. It doesn’t help to ask, but I often wonder what impact this art would have had on me when I was a child. I’m not sure hold old I was when I realized that black people also made art…how would I have known that without seeing black artists’ (at) work? I hope my nieces know that they have gifts to share with the world. I hope they never have to unlearn all the lessons I learned as a child that made me think/fear that beauty and genius belonged to one race and no others…