Today, the National Gallery of Art in DC is holding a festival it is calling “Poetry is a Country” where poets are responding to works in the Gallery’s collection. There is an amazing group of writers gathered, but among them there are three Black poets, two of which are in conversation with Black artists and the last of which I make a bit of leap to make a connection, but in my mind it is still there.
The three Black poets are Hanif Abdurraaqib, Teri Cross Davis and, Jason Reynolds, they respond to artists Mwangi Hunter, Alexander Calder, and Gordon Parks respectively.
I include Davis here not only because she is a wonderful friend and poet whose work I love, but because of a few other things that happen in my mind when I think of her Calder selection. When I hear Calder’s name or see his work I think of Huey Gaddy.
Gaddy is an African-American artist originally from Apex, NC, but spent a lot of time in New England working for Lippincott, Inc. Lippincott is a large-scale fabricator who fabricated some of Calder’s work. I got introduced to Gaddy’s work by my good friend and museum builder and consultant, Jon West-Bey whom I worked for many years and co-founded the Center for Poetic Thought with in 2013. It is hard for me to detangle those associations… some part of me thinks of Gaddy’s hand and mind fabricating Calder’s piece which changes things for me as think about artisitic vision and authorship, but that is a discussion for another day.
So with all of that, check out the entire festival poets and art here
and check the works of Hanif Abdurraaqib (artist Mwangi Hunter), Teri Cross Davis (artist Alexander Calder), and Jason Reynolds (artist Gordon Parks).