Art News
Black History Month Celebrations: The Black Family
What does family mean to you? This month, The Other Art Fair are celebrating the work of black artists and what family means to them.
Whether your family is made up of close relatives, friends, work colleagues, housemates, even your hairdresser, we all crave the embrace of family, even more so now than ever. We are social beings after all!
Throughout February we are celebrating the work of Ashley Buttercup, Lola Ayodele, and K’era Morgan and read below for a few words on what the word family signifies for them.
Bring warmth and joy to your home with art that reminds you of family.
Ashley Buttercup
“Family- is heritage. It’s the core of our make up; the good, the bad, and the confusing.”
Ashley Buttercup is a Brooklyn based painter who focuses on capturing moments through portraiture, collage, and abstract work.
Buttercup received her B.A. at Temple University, where she studied art direction and studio art. Her works have been exhibited throughout Japan, New York, and Philadelphia.
Featured here are works from Ashley’s Visible History Project, where each month she paints an unsung black trailblazer.
Lola Ayodele
Family is space.
It’s comfort.
It’s the right to be yourself.
It’s the welcome home smile of your sister
the way she scoots for you on the bench
telling you she loves you with the wrinkles around her eyes
it’s empowerment.
a loving embrace in the chaos of the modern world
that will give you the strength to carry on
Family is home.
The people who create a home for you.
The places you feel most yourself
the people and practices that remind you of you
and bring you back home, to you.
– A poem by Lola –
Lola Ayodele is a multi disciplinary artist from Lagos, Nigeria. She is inspired by the wonder that is life; the inexplicable, the mundane, and the mysterious.
Lola believes in capturing the wonder that is around us. She believes that there is wonder in our everyday and all we have to do is look.
She picked up her first film camera at a Goodwill in Portland, Oregon. A guy named river was looking through the stash and must have overheard Lola and her sister trying to figure out which camera was working. He picked two cameras and handed it to them. That was the camera she used for 4 years.
K’era Morgan
“Families carry and support you physically and metaphorically at various stages throughout your life.This could be your chosen family or birth family. Regardless, I have found that families, communities, etc. cradle you in times when you need it or are in a vulnerable state but also allow you to grow and expand to become the being you are always meant to be. This happens a myriad of times throughout your lifetime and families, although they may change as far as who the individuals are that make up your family remain a constant in people’s lives.”
K’era Morgan is a Los Angeles-based mixed media artist that creates textured collage paintings.
In addition to her collage works on paper, K’era creates and sells iterations of her paintings that are translated into textiles for the home. Her tapestries, pillows and throws have been featured in publications like Well + Good, California Home + Design and Modern Luxury Interiors.
