Johnathan Payne the to start with artist-in-residence at Aminah Robinson’s home

Johnathan Payne is the first Aminah Robinson house resident artist. He is pictured here at the home.

A 30-year-old African American artist from Memphis, Tennessee, is living and operating in the compact East Columbus residence the place an additional artist established 1000’s of functions of artwork.

The tender-spoken Johnathan Payne is the initially Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson Artist-in-Residence, investing three months this summer months in the renovated Sunbury Road household of the late Columbus artist. He tends to make his meals and occasionally bakes a pound cake in the kitchen whose cupboards are adorned with daring black-and-white portraits painted by Robinson. He’s put his houseplants in the window of the sunroom. And every single day, he operates on his artwork in the studio that was additional to the household when Robinson gained a MacArthur “genius” grant.

When Payne goes to operate in that house, he walks less than a indication more than the door painted by Robinson that reads “Aminah’s Sanctuary.”

Johnathan Payne outside Robinson's home

Payne’s residency, initially set for the summer time of 2020, was delayed a yr for the reason that of the COVID-19 pandemic. When he used for the residency, he was unfamiliar with Robinson’s do the job — multimedia parts that rejoice her African American heritage and integrate discovered elements, buttons, songs bins and a lot much more. Payne right away established about discovering about Robinson’s perform.

“I was struck by the materiality of her pieces and the assortment of her follow — drawing, paintings, and the RagGonGons,” the mixed-media pieces Robinson was regularly adding onto, he said. “I was blown away by her work and astonished that I hadn’t read of her ahead of, especially at this instant when there’s a large amount of awareness being compensated to contemporary Black artists.”

Payne, who describes himself as a Southern, African American queer artist, was chosen for the residency by a workforce of 8 countrywide art experts, such as artist Faith Ringgold and Carole Genshaft, curator-at-significant at the Columbus Museum of Art and an expert on Robinson’s get the job done.

Johnathan Payne

Payne’s software stood out, Genshaft mentioned.

“He felt this romance with Aminah and her spirit and his work seemed definitely exciting,” she claimed.

Payne was born in Houston and with his family lived in a selection of other locations together with New Orleans, Colorado Springs, Scottsdale, Arizona, Memphis and briefly, Westerville, where by he attended kindergarten at McVay Elementary School. Now his mothers and fathers and most of his siblings reside in Montgomery, Alabama, although Payne considers household to be Memphis wherever he graduated from Rhodes College. His master of fantastic arts degree in portray and printmaking is from the Yale Faculty of Artwork in Connecticut.

He has worked as a facilitator and youth courses chief for the BRIDGES program in Memphis and gained an artist residency from Crosstown Arts, also in Memphis. He came to Columbus from Iowa Metropolis in which he was at function in one more artist residency.

Johnathan Payne, artist-in-residence at Aminah Robinson's home.

In Columbus, he is continuing his perform with geometric abstraction and fiber sculpture. He makes lattices of shredded paper and gesso that are assembled in quilt-like constructions. A New York Periods evaluation of his function described his parts “crisscrossing like girders on a bridge … suggesting a variety of architectural lace. They lavishly complicate the grid that is the foundation the two of classical modernism and weaving.”

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