Sedrick Huckaby at AMSET (Beaumont, USA)

Sedrick Huckaby: From Earth to Heaven
Art Museum of Southeast Texas (AMSET)
Oct. 16, 2010 – Jan. 9, 2011

From Oct. 16, 2010 to Jan. 9, 2011, visitors to the Art Museum of Southeast Texas (AMSET) have the good fortune of viewing Sedrick Huckaby: From Earth to Heaven, featuring his “quilt paintings” and portraits of his family created in thick, impasto paint. The most acclaimed piece included in the exhibition will be A Love Supreme, the 80-foot long painting of a series of quilts designed to totally encompass the viewer while representing the artist’s African-American heritage and family.
The community is invited to meet artist Sedrick Huckaby at the opening reception for the exhibition from 6-8 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 15, where he will present a gallery talk.
Huckaby describes his painting style as relief painting. While studying art at Boston University, he developed a deep appreciation for how paint looked and moved and began to use lots of it in his work. Huckaby said he uses paint sculpturally and directs the paint so that the impasto – the buildup of paint on the canvas – becomes the forms. He was further inspired to use this technique by Auguste Rodin’s forms in The Gates of Hell, which he visited after earning his Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University while traveling throughout Europe studying the old masters.
Returning to his hometown of Fort Worth after his travels, Huckaby began using the techniques to paint portraits and interiors that embrace the defining and personal moments of family life. He is most inspired by his family, his faith, and his African-American heritage. Much of Huckaby’s work is a tribute to his late grandmother, “Big Momma” Hallie Beatrice Carpenter, who was the heart of his family.
Huckaby’s paintings also feature aspects of African-American culture, which is shown repeatedly in his use of quilts as backgrounds for portraits and as the focus of A Love Supreme. This enormous painting, which took seven years to complete, totally wraps around viewers in the gallery, without any starting or ending point. According to Huckaby, A Love Supreme speaks of seasons, of the people who made the quilts, of music and, at the highest level, could speak of God and how He surrounds us and comforts us like a quilt.
Huckaby was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 2008, a highly prestigious and competitive fellowship given to artists, scientists, and scholars on the basis of stellar achievement and exceptional promise. At only 35 years old, he has exhibited his work in over 20 solo exhibitions all over the United States and has participated in at least 50 group exhibitions. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina; and the African American Museum in Dallas, among others.
This exhibition is organized by AMSET and funded in part by the C. Homer and Edith Fuller Chambers Charitable Foundation, Helen Caldwell Locke and Curtis Blakey Locke Charitable Foundation, City of Beaumont, Dorothy Anne Conn, Southeast Texas Arts Council, Entergy Texas, Inc., Texas Commission on the Arts, The Links Inc., Golden Triangle Chapter, Dr. Charles and Carolyn “Linda” Foutz, Dr. and Mrs. Coffy Pieternelle, Carla and Josh Allen, Rob Clark in honor of Sam and Lisa Parigi, Regina Rogers in honor of Linda Foutz, Kim and Roy Steinhagen, and Dr. Hervy Hiner.
Through unique collections, exhibitions, public programs and outreach in the visual arts, the mission of the Art Museum of Southeast Texas is to provide education, inspiration and creative vision throughout Southeast Texas.