Hawkins Bolden: Seated

From sight-oriented metal forms covered in eyes to the Christian imagery of wooden crosses, Bolden’s works map his experiences, an extension of all he knew, loved, and feared. The artist worked through some of the most turbulent decades of the Civil Rights Movement and lived a short distance from the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. This reality, paired with the uncanny naturalism of the works presented here, suggest that perhaps Bolden sought to consider violent events through his distilled forms. While some of the seemingly severed lower extremities are propped by frames and beams, the majority hang limply, unposed. The scarecrow motif evokes paradoxical themes of death and resurrection, conjuring an air of disquietude.

The works on view are further defined by the use of recycled clothing, referencing a long tradition of transforming old jeans, overalls, scraps, and rags into functional works of art. Not unlike the quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend, Bolden altered old work pants to complete his artworks. Many of the garments likely came from the artist’s own wardrobe, worn out after years spent drilling, stuffing, and assembling in his garden. These resulting works unnerve and compel with equal might, employing discarded objects and immediate imagery to reference a history of craft, culture, and self.

Hawkins Bolden’s work is in the collections of the American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY; the American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, MD; the de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; The High Museum, Atlanta, GA; John Michael Kohler Arts Center Collection, Sheboygan, WI; The Museum of Everything, London, England; Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; The Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Atlanta, GA; and The Smithsonian Museum of Art, Washington D.C.