We couldn’t let Black History Month pass by without honoring three of our favorite Black creatives from the past and present. While it’s impossible to capture their scope and influence on the world in a short blog post, we hope these snapshots serve as a celebration of just a few of the many Black artists and creators in recent history.
Ann Lowe
Ann Lowe is best known as being the dressmaker to Jackie Kennedy and her entire bridal party. Her impact on fashion in the 1950s and 1960s, however, is still being unpacked and realized since her many of her designs were sadly (but perhaps unsurprisingly) uncredited or miscredited at the time of their creation as a result of racism.
Lowe’s work with silk flowers, which she began creating from scraps as she was learning to sew from her mother and grandmother, became a signature design element and one that brought a sense of whimsy yet realistic detail to her elegant, gorgeously crafted debutante gowns and wedding dresses. Known for wearing a signature black hat while she worked, Lowe faced numerous adversities as a Black female business owner, from the times she was segregated in a separate room from other students during her design classes to the fact that she was consistently paid less than white designers for her extensively meticulous creations.
Lowe’s skills as a master craftswoman, however, speak for themselves and are evident in the dresses that hang in renowned collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture today.
Yinka Shonibare
Yinka Shonibare was born in London to Nigerian parents and spent most of his childhood in Lagos. He returned to England in the summers and to attend university, where he began exploring in depth the idea of cultural identity and how it is constructed on both a personal and societal scale. Incorporating brightly colored Dutch wax fabrics into his work has become a statement and a frequent point of discourse for Shonibare, whose impactful pieces have been exhibited throughout the world.
Shonibare’s work addresses the effects of colonialism, post-colonialism, and globalization (with a focus on the links between Africa and Europe) on the current states of race and class through paintings, film, sculpture, textile, photography, and installation art.
In one of his latest collections, Shonibare, who was named a member of the Royal Academy and is a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, created Earth Kids, a “call to action” to protect the planet for future generations.
Simone Leigh
When Simone Leigh represents the United States in the 2022 Venice Biennale with her own pavilion, she will become the first Black woman to do so. Leigh is famous for her medium-bending, groundbreaking works that often depict Black women (some well-known and others anonymous) and their hidden traditions and histories. Brick House, a 16-foot-tall bronze bust of a Black woman that is currently exhibited on New York’s High Line, is one of her highly celebrated recent works and is part of Leigh’s Anatomy of Architecture series, which fuses elements of the human body with architectural influences from Cameroon, Benin, Togo, and Chad as well as the American South.
