Maren Hassinger (born Maren Louise Jenkins in 1947) is an

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

artist and educator whose career spans four decades. Hassinger uses

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

, film, dance,

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

, and

public art Public art is art in any Media (arts), media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and phy ...

to explore the relationship between the natural world and industrial materials. She incorporates everyday materials in her art, like wire rope, plastic bags, branches, dirt, newspaper, garbage, leaves, and cardboard boxes. Hassinger has stated that her work “focuses on elements, or even problems—social and environmental—that we all share, and in which we all have a stake…. I want it to be a humane and humanistic statement about our future together.” Trained in dance, Hassinger transitioned to making sculpture and visual art in college. Hassinger received her MFA in Fiber Arts from UCLA in 1973. She was the director emeritus of the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the

Maryland Institute College of Art The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is a Private university, private art school, art and design college in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1826 as the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts, it is regarded as one of ...

for ten years. She currently lives and works in New York City.

Early life

In 1947, Maren Louise Jenkins was born in

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

, to Helen Mills Jenkins, a police officer and educator, and late father, Carey Kenneth Jenkins, an architect. At an early age, she showed a gift for art and was exposed to both her mother's interest in flower arranging and her father's work at his drafting table.Megerian, Maureen. “Entwined with Nature: The Sculpture of Maren Hassinger.” ''Woman's Art Journal'', vol. 17, no. 2, 1996, pp. 21–25. ''JSTOR'', JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1358463.

Education

In 1965, she enrolled at

Bennington College Bennington College is a private liberal arts college in Bennington, Vermont, United States. Founded as a women’s college in 1932,

after being rejected for their dance program, she studied scultpure with the help of Issac Witkin, as well as drawing with Pat Adams. Hassinger graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in sculpture in 1969. Because she originally intended to study dance at

Bennington Bennington is a New England town, town in Bennington County, Vermont, United States. It is one of two shire towns (county seats) of the county, the other being Manchester (town), Vermont, Manchester. As of the 2020 United States Census, US Cens ...

she, instead, sought to incorporate aspects of dance into her sculptures. During Hassinger's years at Bennington College, the institution was an all-women's college, prominently white with mostly men serving as instructors, many of whom had

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

gallery affiliations. Hassinger believed the institutional connections and affiliations of the instructors were distant from the experiences of many students, and she rejected the formal strategies that were being taught. In an essay on Hassinger's practice, Maureen Megerian wrote:

". . . Clement Greenberg's formalist approach dominated the art department, so instructors focused on the creation of abstract, Constructivist-inspired welded steel sculpture. Minimalism, then predominant in the New York art world, presented another model of formulaic, abstract art for students to follow. assingerultimately rejected such strict formal strategies, although the discipline of these methods, especially such Minimalist devices as repetition and regular arrangement, provides her work with a rational underpinning that she consciously complicates and makes more emotionally engaging."

In 1969, she moved to New York City to enroll in drafting courses and concurrently work as an art editor at a publishing company. As an editor, she managed the inclusion of African-American images in textbooks, "...a position she has described as 'demeaning." She married writer Peter Hassinger and returned to Los Angeles with her husband in 1970. She earned a Master of Fine Arts in fiber from

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

in 1973.

Arts career and influences

Maren Hassinger started her artistic experimentation while a graduate student at UCLA in the early 1970s, in a Los Angeles junkyard where she came across bulks of industrial wire rope. She found that the material could be used sculpturally and as a fiber that could be manipulated to resemble plant life. This became a signature medium for her. It was also during this period that Hassinger began to collaborate with the sculptor

Senga Nengudi Senga Nengudi (née Sue Irons; born September 18, 1943) is an African Americans, African-American visual artist and curator. She is best known for her abstract sculptures that combine found objects and choreographed performance. She is part of a ...

. The two artists' friendship developed when they were both working as

CETA The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA; French: ''accord économique et commercial global'', AECG; German: ''Umfassendes Wirtschafts- und Handelsabkommen'') is a free-trade agreement between Canada and the European Union and its m ...

artists administered by Brockman Gallery. This federally funded program enabled Hassinger to create ''Twelve Trees #2'' in 1979. Hassinger was part of Los Angeles art collective Studio Z which included Nengudi,

David Hammons David Hammons (born July 24, 1943) is an American artist, best known for his works in and around New York City and Los Angeles during the 1970s and 1980s. Early life David Hammons was born in 1943 in Springfield, Illinois, the youngest of ten ...

, Ronn Davis, Duval Lewis, RoHo,

Franklin Parker Franklin Parker (November 8, 1902 – June 12, 1962), also known as Frank Parker or Franklyn Parker, was an American character actor who appeared in over 100 films during his twenty-five year career. Born in Fillmore, Missouri on November 8, 1902 ...

Barbara McCullough Barbara McCullough (born 1945) is a director, production manager and visual effects artist whose directorial works are associated with the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers, Los Angeles School of Black independent filmmaking. She is best kno ...

Houston Conwill Houston Eugene Conwill (April 2, 1947 – November 14, 2016) was an American multidisciplinary artist known best for large-scale public Sculpture, sculptural Installation art, installations. Conwill was a sculptor, painter, and performance and co ...

, and Joe Ray (artist). Southern fiction writer

Walker Percy Walker Percy, Oblate of Saint Benedict, OblSB (May 28, 1916 – May 10, 1990) was an American writer whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is noted for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans; his first, ''Th ...

influenced her childhood connection between the natural and the manufactured world with his work, ''Wreath''. Many of Percy's novels, which Hassinger was reading at the time, are about navigating a modern world that was becoming removed from nature. Another influence which struck her was the sculpture work of

Eva Hesse Eva Hesse (January 11, 1936 – May 29, 1970) was a German-born American sculptor known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She is one of the artists who ushered in the postminimal art movement in the 196 ...

. During an exhibition at the

Pasadena Art Museum The Norton Simon Museum is an art museum located in Pasadena, California. It was previously known as the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum and displays numerous sculptures on its grounds. Overview The Norton Simon collections ...

in 1973, Hassinger was introduced to Hesse's work and admired her obsessive exploration of forms and techniques, and ability to convey emotion through fiber methods. Hassinger recalled:

"It was as if I was looking at somebody's spirit made manifest. . . it was an absolute gut level, wrenching experience. . . as if the sculpture were made flesh. . . later when I began to read about va Hesse it was as if she had managed somehow to put all the emotional truth of her life into that piece, and it communicated that way. . . It was a total true expression of life."

Dance and Performance Art

Hassinger practiced and trained in dance since the time she was just five years old and hoped to pursue a career involving dance. After being turned away from the dance major at Bennington, Hassinger alternatively decided to study fine arts, specifically sculpture, all the while incorporating her love for dance into her work through performance art and her eventual collaboration with

. Their friendship sparked a shared interest in dance, sculpture, and art through performance. Together they produced ''Get Up'', ' 'R.S.V.P. Performance Piece'', and many other works. Incorporating both sculptural and performance work, Hassinger and Nengudi's collaborative sculptures have been considered ahead of their time due to their process of "combin ngsculpture, dance, theater, music and more with the collaborative spirit of community meetings and the avant-garde brio of Allan Kaprow's happenings." Additionally, Hassinger utilizes movements of everyday life in her dance. Hassinger wrote a "Manifesto" about her work with Nengudi in 2006, to which Nengudi wrote the response "Maren and Me" in 2009, both essays expressing their solidarity, mutual artistic inspiration and love for each other. Hassinger's love of dance continued throughout her life and has shaped how she understands and makes art. While few of their works from the 1970s remain, Hassinger and Nengudi continue to collaborate, with Hassinger activating Nengudi's sculpture ''R.S.V.P.X'' as recently as 2014. In a discussion with art critic

Kellie Jones Kellie Jones (born 1959) is an American art historian and curator. She is a Professor in Art History and Archaeology in African American Studies at Columbia University. She won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2016. In 2023, she was elected to the Amer ...

, Hassenger has said this about her performance work: "I don't see art performance as a form you necessarily have to entertain an audience or feel compelled to make them laugh or cry or clap their hands, because what it is really about is communication.... It's like having your art thoughts and sticking them on the body and having your body move around. It's absolutely an extension of those art thoughts"

Film

Through moving videos, Hassinger has explored personal family interactions and her own family history to tackle themes of identity. Her daughter, Ava Hassinger, is also an artist. The two have produced a video in which they perform improvisational choreography together under the title "Matriarch." In 2004, ''Daily Mask'', which is a 16mm film transferred to video, was made. It depicts Hassinger acting out her personal story and references back to an African past through associations to sculpture, art/cultural history, and feminist issues.

Themes

Hassinger's work has been described as "ecological," but Hassinger herself does not see her work as such. Rather, she aims to produce humanistic statements about society and its commonalities. She unveils how meaningless cultural stereotyping is due to the way it establishes racial and social barriers and buries away the similarities and parallels that exists between people. Moreover, Hassinger remains adamant on having contemporaneous conversations in regards to race and gender. Additionally, Hassinger has addressed issues of equality with works like ''Love'', a display made of hundreds of pink plastic bags, each containing a love note. Such pieces exemplify how she is able to evoke beauty and themes about society using everyday, common materials.

Mid-life

From 1984-1985, Hassinger worked at the Studio Museum in Harlem as an artist-in-residence. During the 1980s, the League of Allied Arts sponsored the musical ''Ain't Misbehavin'' honoring various Black artists. The League of Allied Arts is the longest running Black women's arts nonprofit arts organization in the Los Angeles area. The musical took place at the Aquarius Theatre in Hollywood and Hassinger was among the several honored artists. From 1997 until 2017, she was the Director of the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the

. Hassinger was an

adjunct professor An adjunct professor is a type of academic appointment in higher education who does not work at the establishment full-time. The terms of this appointment and the job security of the tenure vary in different parts of the world, but the term is gen ...

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public university, public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is on ...

for five years.

Collections

Hassinger has work held in the permanent collections of

Hammer Museum The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur- ...

, Los Angeles, CA; Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, Baltimore, MD;

California African American Museum The California African American Museum (CAAM) is a museum located in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, next to the California Science Center. The museum focuses on enrichment and education on the cultural heritage and history of African Americans w ...

, Los Angeles, CA;

Portland Museum of Art The Portland Museum of Art, or PMA, is the largest and oldest public art institution in Maine. Founded as the Portland Society of Art in 1882. It is located in the downtown area known as The Arts District in Portland, Maine. History The PMA use ...

, Portland, OR; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Williams College Art Museum, Williamstown, MA;

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...

, San Francisco, CA; the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York, NY.

Works

* ''Untitled (Sea Anemone)'', 1971 * ''Untitled'', 1972/ 2020 * ''Tree Duet I'', 5617 San Vicente Blvd, Los Angeles, 1977/ 2021 * ''Tree Duet II'', 5617 San Vicente Blvd, Los Angeles, 1977/ 2021 * ''Walking'', 1978 * ''Twelve Trees #2'', Mulholland Drive off-ramp, San Diego Freeway, northbound, Los Angeles, CA, 1979/ 2015 * ''Leaning'', 1980 * ''On Dangerous Ground'', 1981 *
Pink Trash
', Lynwood, CA, 1982 * ''Necklace of Trees'', Atlanta Festival for the Arts, Atlanta, GA, 1985-85 * ''Field/Oasis'', 1987 * ''Bushes at Socrates Sculpture Park'', Socrates Sculpture Park, Astoria, Queens, NY, 1988 * ''Plaza Planters and Tree Grates'', Commissions for Downtown Seattle Transit Project, Seattle, WA, 1986–90 * ''Field'', Nasher Sculpture Center, 1989 * ''Tall Grasses'', Roosevelt Island, New York, NY, 1989-90 * ''Circle of Bushes'', for C. W. Post, Long Island University, Brookville, NY, 1991 * ''Cloud Room'', Commission for the Greater

Pittsburgh International Airport Pittsburgh International Airport —originally Greater Pittsburgh Airport and later Greater Pittsburgh International Airport—is a civil-military international airport in Findlay Township and Moon Township, Pennsylvania, United States. Abou ...

, Pittsburgh, PA, 1992 * ''Evening Shadows'', University Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach, CA, 1993 * ''Window Boxes,'' Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, NY, 1993 * ''Fence of Leaves,'' P.S. 8, NY, 1995 * ''Ancestor Walk'', Commission for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, 1996 * ''Consolation'', 1996 * ''Place of Bliss'', 2001 * ''Daily Mask'', 1997-2004 * ''Art in the Garden,'' Grant Park, Chicago, IL, 2004-5 * ''Rivers,'' 2007 * ''Love Square'', 2008/2025 * ''Sit Upons'', 2010 * ''Whole Cloth'', 2017 * ''Monument 1 (Corner #1)'', 2018/ 2020 * ''Tree of Knowledge'', 2019 * ''Monument'', 2020 * ''Paradise Regained'', 2020 * ''Garden'', 2020 * ''And a River Runs Through It'', 2020 * ''Untitled Vessel (Large Body)'', 2021 * ''Untitled Vessel (Small Body)'', 2021 * ''Untitled Vessel (Beige)'', 2021 * ''Window'', 2021 * ''Vessel 1'', 2022 * ''Vessel 2'', 2022/ 2024 * ''Vessel 7'', 2022 * ''Vessel 5'', 2022 * ''Vessel 8'', 2022 * ''Eden 2, 2023 '' * ''Eden 3'', 2023 * ''Eden 6'', 2023 * ''Eden 10'', 2023 * ''Vessel 5 (Rope and Wire)'', 2023 * ''Vessel 7 and 8 (Rope and Wire)'', 2023 * ''Rose Leaf Composition'', 2025 * ''Growing II,'' 2025 * ''Wall Composition II'', 2025 * ''Wall Composition III'', 2025 * ''Falls II'', 2025 * ''Cascade,'' 2025 A subway station in New York City, the Central Park North – 110th Street (IRT Lenox Avenue Line) station, installed a work titled ''Message from Malcolm'' by Hassinger during a 1998 renovation. The work consists of mosaic panels on the platform and the main fare control area's street stairs depicting quotes and writings by

Malcolm X Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an African American revolutionary, Islam in the United States, Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figur ...

written in script and surrounded by mosaic borders.

Awards and honors

* Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art,

(2009) *Grants,

Joan Mitchell Foundation Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 – October 30, 1992) was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artis ...

(1996) *

Anonymous Was a Woman Award The Anonymous Was A Woman Award is a grant program for women artists who are over 40 years of age, in part to counter sexism in the art world. It began in 1996 in direct response to the National Endowment for the Arts' decision to stop funding i ...

(1997) *

Pollock-Krasner Foundation The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 for the purpose of providing funding to visual artists internationally to further their artistic practices. It was established at the bequest of Lee Krasner, who was an American abstract expr ...

(2007)

Selected solo exhibitions

Maren Hassinger's work has been featured in exhibitions at numerous galleries and institutions including the following solo exhibitions:
Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery
Reed College, Portland, OR, ''Las Vegas Ikebana: Maren Hassinger and Senga Nengudi'' (publication) (2024) * Art Institute Chicago, Chicago, IL. ''Maren Hassinger: This Is How We Grow'' (2023-2024) * Oklahoma Contemporary Nature, Sweet Nature 2021 * The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY., ''Maren Hassinger: Monuments'', (2018-2019). Site specific works that are located in

Marcus Garvey Park Marcus Garvey Park (formerly and also named Mount Morris Park) is a park on the border between the Harlem and East Harlem neighborhoods of Manhattan, New York City. The park, centered on a massive and steep outcropping of schist, interrupts th ...

. *

Spelman College Museum of Fine Art The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art is a museum located on the Spelman College campus in Atlanta. Since its inception, the museum has been housed in the Camille O. Hanks Cosby Academic Center named after philanthropist Camille Cosby, who had ...

, Atlanta, Georgia, USA ''Maren Hassinger: A Retrospective'' (2015) * Reginald Ingraham Gallery, Los Angeles, California, USA ''Maren Hassinger'' (2014) *

, Atlanta, Georgia, USA ''Maren Hassinger . . . Dreaming'' (2013) * Schmucker Gallery, Gettysburg, PA, USA ''Maren Hassinger: Lives'' (2010) * Contemporary Arts Forum and Alice Keck Park, Santa Barbara, CA., ''Blanket of Branches'' and ''Dancing Branches'', (1986) *

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961 ...

, Los Angeles, CA., ''Gallery Six: Maren Hassinger'', (1981) * Just Above Midtown/Downtown Gallery, New York, NY., ''Beach'', (1980)

Selected group exhibitions

Selected group exhibitions include: In 2022, the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

, organized the exhibition ''Joan Didion: What She Means'', curated by

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

theater critic

Hilton Als Hilton Als (born 1960) is an American writer and theater critic. He is a teaching professor at the University of California, Berkeley, an associate professor of writing at Columbia University and a staff writer and theater critic for ''The New Yo ...

. The show traveled to the

Pérez Art Museum Miami Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)—officially known as the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County—is a contemporary art museum that relocated in 2013 to the Maurice A. Ferré Park in Downtown Miami, Florida. Founded in 1984 as the Cent ...

in 2023, and works by Maren Hassinger were included alongside artworks by 50 other contemporary international artists such as Félix González-Torres,

Vija Celmins Vija Celmins ( ;Hilarie M. Sheets and Randy Kennedy (September 24, 2015)''New York Times''. ; ; born October 25, 1938) is a Latvian American visual artist best known for photo-realistic paintings and drawings of natural environments and phenomen ...

Betye Saar Betye Irene Saar (born July 30, 1926) is an American artist known for her work in the medium of Assemblage (art), assemblage. Saar is a visual storyteller and an accomplished printmaker. Saar was a part of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s, w ...

Ana Mendieta Ana Mendieta (November 18, 1948 – September 8, 1985) was a Cuban-American performance artist, sculptor, painter, and video artist who is best known for her "earth-body" artwork. She is considered one of the most influential Cuban-American ar ...

Silke Otto-Knapp Silke Otto-Knapp (1970–2022) was a German artist. Her work was shown at numerous galleries and shows including the Bienal de São Paulo. the Istanbul Biennial and the Liverpool Biennial. She is represented by Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/Berlin/ ...

John Koch John Koch (August 18, 1909 — April 19, 1978), (pronounced "KŌK") was an American painter and teacher, and an important figure in 20th century Realism (arts), Realism. He is best known for his light-filled paintings of urban interiors, often f ...

Ed Ruscha Edward Joseph Ruscha IV (, ''roo-SHAY''; born December 16, 1937) is an American artist associated with the anti- pop art movement. He has worked in the media of painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, and film. He is also noted for creating s ...

Pat Steir Pat Steir (born 1938) is an American painter and printmaker. Her early work was loosely associated with conceptual art and minimalism, however, she is best known for her abstract dripped, splashed and poured "Waterfall" paintings, which she sta ...

, among others. *

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

, Brooklyn, NY, ''We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-85'' (2017) *

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is a not-for-profit institution in the Museum District, Houston, Texas, founded in 1948, dedicated to presenting contemporary art to the public. As a non-collecting museum, it strives to provide a forum for visua ...

, Houston, Texas, USA ''Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art'' (2012) *

Havana Biennial The Bienal de La Habana was a traditional Latin, Caribbean event, originated in Havana, Havana, Cuba, that aims to raise awareness to promote contemporary art and giving priority to Latin Americans, Latin-American and Caribbean artists. The eve ...

, ''Cinema Remixed and Reloaded 2.0'', (2012) *

, Los Angeles, California, USA ''Now Dig This!: Art of Black Los Angeles 1960 –1980'' (2011) * Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA., ''Dance/Draw'', (2011) *

, Atlanta, Georgia, USA ''Material Girls: Contemporary Black Women Artists'' (2011) * The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY., ''VideoStudio: Playback'', (2011) * Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Baltimore, MD., ''Material Girls'', (2011) *

Museum of Arts and Design The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), based in Manhattan, New York City, collects, displays, and interprets objects that document contemporary and historic innovation in craft, art, and design. In its exhibitions and educational programs, the ...

, New York, NY, ''Global Africa Project, '' (2010) * The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY., ''30 Seconds off an Inch'', (2009)

References

External links

Maren Hassinger - Portfolio
Official site {{DEFAULTSORT:Hassinger, Maren 1947 births American contemporary artists African-American contemporary artists Living people 20th-century American women artists Bennington College alumni University of California, Los Angeles alumni Artists from Los Angeles Maryland Institute College of Art faculty American women academics 21st-century American artists 21st-century American women artists 20th-century African-American women 20th-century African-American artists 21st-century African-American women 21st-century African-American artists