Melvin "Mel" Edwards (born May 4, 1937)[1][2] is an American artist, teacher, and abstractsteel-metal sculptor. Additionally he has worked in drawing and printmaking. His artwork has political content often referencing African-American history, as well as the exploration of themes within slavery.[1][3] Visually his works are characterized by the use of straight-edged triangular and rectilinear forms in metal. He lives between Upstate New York and in Plainfield, New Jersey.[4]
Melvin Eugene Edwards, Jr., was born on May 4, 1937, in Houston, Texas, to Thelmarie Edwards and Melvin Edwards Sr,[2] and was the eldest of his parents' four children.[3] His father worked for Houston Lighting & Power and his parents divorced in early childhood.[4] He was raised in Dayton, Ohio, for five years, but by middle-school age the family moved back to Houston,[4][3] where Edwards grew up during a time of racial segregation. He attended E. O. Smith Junior High School and Phillis Wheatley High School.[5][3] He was a creator from a young age and was encouraged by his parents with his father building his first easel when he was 14 years old.[3] Edwards was introduced to abstract art by a high-school teacher.[5] While attending high school, Edwards started to take art classes at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.[3]
In 1955, he moved to southern California to pursue studies at Los Angeles City College.[6] Edwards transferred schools to study art and play football at the University of Southern California (USC), where he received his B.F.A. degree in 1965.[1][3][6] While attending USC, Edwards took a history course that was rooted in a European-centric view, which upset him and fueled him to learn more about African history. This inspired his travel to Africa five years later.[3]
In 1969, Edwards met the artist Frank Bowling, a painter who shares his interest in making art that is primarily abstract, a position that would become contested as members of the Black cultural and artistic community called for art to serve as a site of political empowerment. Bowling made a work that referenced Edwards, titled Mel Edwards Decides (1968).[16]
In 1970, Edwards took his first trip to Africa, visiting the West African republics of Nigeria, Togo, Benin, and Ghana.[3] This trip influenced his work, and was followed by other visits to Africa over the years.[3] During the 1970s, he participated in a community art space called Communications Village, operated by printmaker Benjamin Leroy Wigfall in Kingston, NY. Andrews made prints with the help of printer assistants who had been taught printmaking by Wigfall, and Edwards exhibited there.[17]
Work
Smokehouse (1968–1970)
Smokehouse (also known as Smokehouse Associates, Smokehouse Collective, Smokehouse Painters) was a New York City-based community "wall painting" initiative created in part by Melvin Edwards and William T. Williams, spanning from 1968 until 1970.[18][13] The project existed as a social experiment asking the question: "Can abstraction solve social justice?"[6] The wall paintings consisted of hard-edge graphics and geometric patterns,[6] occurring between 120th Street and 125th Street of Harlem. The project was born out of pondering on how the 19th-century tradition of stacking houses affected the human psyche and Edwards believes there to be a strong correlation between living spaces and the lives of people. He mentions this in an interview at the Soul of a Nation Symposium in 2018, stating: "If you change places, you can change the lives of people."[15][better source needed] Edwards wanted the public to participate in the way cities were developing. In every project, Smokehouse would hire someone elderly within the community and someone young.[citation needed]
These murals never surpassed 16 feet in scale, due to the height restrictions of the initiative's ladder. Nevertheless, Smokehouse painted alleyways, tops of buildings, and sides of buildings. William T. Williams handled the logistics of the organization.[14] As the project continued, MOMA patron Celeste Bartos and David Rockefeller underwrote these projects. The more recognition they received, the bigger people wanted them to go; however, they did not feel comfortable going too large.
121st and Sylvan still have the annual tradition of doing a community-based mural project because of Smokehouse.[14][19]
Lynch Fragments series (1963–present)
Palmares (1988), from the series Lynch Fragments, at the National Gallery of Art's showing of Afro-Atlantic Histories in 2022Cup of? (1988), Chitungwiza (1989), Katutura (1986), and Sekuru Knows (1988), from the series Lynch Fragments, at the Museum of Modern Art in 2022
Edwards' work Some Bright Morning (1963) started his series Lynch Fragments, and was a reference to Ralph Ginzburg's 1962 anthology 100 Years of Lynchings.[20][21][7] The series now has more than 200 pieces.[3] Inspired by the turmoil of the Civil Rights Movement, these small-scale welded-metal wall reliefs were developed in three periods: 1963 to 1967, 1973 to 1974, and 1978 to the present.[7][22] Edwards created the series as metaphor of the struggles experienced by African Americans.[23] A variety of metal objects are employed as the raw materials for these works, including hammer heads, scissors, locks, chains, and railroad splices.[3] The sculptures, usually no more than a foot tall, are hung on the wall at eye level.
Rocker series
Edwards is also known for smaller freestanding works, the kinetic "Rockers" series.[24] Works from the Rocker series include, Homage to Coco (1970), Good Friends in Chicago (1972), Avenue B (Rocker) (1975), Memories of Coco (1980), A Conversation with Norman Lewis (1980), among others.[25][better source needed] These moving sculptures are inspired by his memories, including one of him falling off his grandmother's rocking-chair and another as a homage to his friendships. Edwards used the term "syncopate" to describe the interaction while rocking, and the relationship of syncopation in African-American music.[25]
Other work
Edwards is also known for works executed in the medium of printmaking.
A 30-year retrospective of his sculpture was held in 1993 at the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York, and a 50-year retrospective titled Melvin Edwards: Five Decades was held in 2015 at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas.[32][33][27][34]Melvin Edwards: Crossroads, an exhibition of 23 sculptures and installations, exploring the cross-cultural connections in the artist's work, was presented at the Baltimore Museum of Art from September 29, 2019 to January 12, 2020.[35][36]
Edwards was married in 1960 to Karen Hamre; together they had three children.[3] In 1969, the couple separated; Hamre and the children stayed in Los Angeles while Edwards had already moved to New York City.[14]
In 1976, Edwards married the poet Jayne Cortez.[37] Cortez and Edwards worked together: he illustrated her first book Pissstained Stairs and the Monkey Man's Wares (1969), and she wrote a series of poems to accompany her husband's work Lynch Fragments.[12][14]
His art studios are located in upstate New York and in Plainfield, New Jersey, and he often travels to Dakar, Senegal.[4]
^ ab"Melvin Edwards: Crossroads". Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Retrieved May 7, 2020. In 1965 the Santa Barbara Museum of Art organized Edwards' first solo exhibition, which launched his professional career.
^Edwards, Daniel (July 5, 2017), "Twentieth-century display case archive", Sculpture and the Vitrine, Routledge, pp. 197–208, doi:10.4324/9781315088235-10 (inactive February 19, 2024), ISBN978-1-315-08823-5((citation)): CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of February 2024 (link)
