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.”
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.
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.
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.”
“The grid is so integral to African design,” Payne reported. He included that his will work are huge but created of delicate resources.
The fragility of his work, he explained, “reflects the fragility of marginalized individuals.”
Payne stated that in some strategies, his art is not dissimilar to Robinson’s and “is referential to the quilt-creating, buttoning and embroidery operate she did.”
“I want to handle this residency as a woodshedding instant, explore new materials and educate myself tools with which I can execute new performs.”
Although in Columbus, Payne will participate in at minimum a few local community outreach courses, a single that may perhaps entail a flowerbed portray action with kids in the Sunbury spot community. He also will have an exhibit of his functions, probably in Beeler Gallery at the Columbus College or university of Art & Structure.
The residency, to be crammed per year, includes a stipend of $15,000. Needs are that the artist be expert, agree to take part in community applications and be African American.
“As much as we know, it is the only residency for African American artists in the house of an African American artist,” Genshaft mentioned.
The Columbus Museum of Art, which owns the Robinson dwelling, designs a residency there for a writer-researcher for the spring/summer season of 2022, yet another visual artist residency for the slide of 2022, and, in conjunction with the Higher Columbus Arts Council, fellowships for neighborhood artists to work in but not stay in the property in both of those 2021 and 2022.
“Our goal is t
o retain the household occupied with these residencies and fellowships,” Genshaft said.
Robinson died at age 75 in 2015, leaving her household and her artwork to the museum. She did not know about the residency program.
“But we have all her archives and letters and a short while ago I arrived throughout a note that reported she hoped that someday the household could be utilized as an artist’s home,” Genshaft claimed. “Wow! I was so satisfied. We believe that Aminah would be quite pleased the property is staying made use of by artists due to the fact she often mentored artists.”
Payne reported he has been thinking about “what it need to have felt like for Aminah to work listed here. She had all the applications she wanted — books, languages she was studying, elders and pals in the neighborhood. She never seemed to run out of strategies.
“The spirit of Aminah is anything I have felt here.”
At a glance
Johnathan Payne will give an artist communicate at 7 p.m. July 29 both of those on the net and at the Columbus Museum of Art, 480 E. Wide St. Admission is totally free. Connect with 614-221-6801 or pay a visit to www.columbusmuseum.org.