Mel Edwards

Melvin Eugene Edwards Jr. was born on May 4, 1937, in Houston, the eldest of four children born to Thelmarie Edwards and Melvin Edwards Sr.^[4] The family moved to McNair, Texas, in 1942 where Edwards started first grade,^[5] before moving again to Dayton, Ohio, in 1944 for Melvin Sr.'s job at the Boy Scouts of America.^[4] Edwards attended the racially integrated schools Wogoman Elementary and Irving Elementary in Dayton.^[5] He has said his first understanding of art came after his fourth grade art teacher at Irving had the class practice figure drawing; while the other students drew cartoon figures, Edwards noticed that his own drawing was a more realistic portrayal: "this was a revelation to me. It was a surprise... that that could be done."^[6]

In 1949 his family moved in with Edwards' grandmother in Houston,^[4] having returned to Texas for his father's new job with Houston Lighting & Power, though his parents divorced during his childhood.^[3] Edwards grew up in Houston during a time of racial segregation,^[7] attending E. O. Smith Junior High School and Phillis Wheatley High School.^[4] He began seriously making art at a young age, encouraged by both his parents and teachers; his father and a family friend built his first easel when he was 14 years old,^[4] and his father was himself an amateur painter.^[6] While attending high school, Edwards was one of two students selected from his school to take art classes at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston;^[4] he was also introduced to abstract art by one of his high school teachers.^[7]

After graduating high school Edwards moved to Los Angeles, in 1955, living with his aunt and uncle while working part-time to pay for courses at Los Angeles City College.^[8] While in college he worked a number of jobs, including at the post office, in a warehouse, and as a porter in a hospital.^[9] Edwards was interested in studying art but also wanted to continue his sports career, so he transferred to the University of Southern California (USC), to study and play football.^[8] His first period of study at USC was primarily focused on painting, and his professors included Francis de Erdely, Hans Burkhardt, Hal Gebhardt, and Edward Ewing,^[10][4] as well as the art historian Theresa Fulton.^[11] He then accepted a scholarship to attend the Los Angeles County Art Institute (now the Otis College of Art and Design), studying under his first sculpture teachers Renzo Fenci and Joe Mugnaini, but he transferred back to USC after six months when he received a scholarship to return to play football.^[11] Edwards has that one of his undergraduate history courses at USC, rooted in Eurocentric views of history, inspired his later visits to Africa to learn about the history of the continent.^[12]

While attending USC Edwards met fellow art student Karen Hamre;^[4] the two married in 1960 and Hamre gave birth to their first daughter, Ana, the same year.^[9] Edwards also became friends with several other artists in Los Angeles, including Marvin Harden, Daniel LaRue Johnson, Ron Miyashiro, Ed Bereal, and David Novros.^[4] Edwards finished the majority of his undergraduate coursework by 1960,^[8] although he did not receive his degree until 1965,^[13] due to an uncompleted language course necessary for graduation.^[14]

After finishing the majority of his studies at USC, Edwards asked graduate student and sculptor George Baker to teach him to weld. He took additional night classes with Baker in 1962 to learn more about the technique and process.^[4] He also found employment to help support his family, working in a ceramics factory owned by fellow USC graduate Tony Hill. Edwards was trained in specialized finishing techniques to complete the modernist ceramics produced in the factory.^[9] In addition, he eventually found work at a film production company owned by Novros' father.^[9] The company's office was located near June Wayne's Tamarind Lithography Workshop (now the Tamarind Institute), and he would visit the center on his lunch breaks, meeting influential national artists like George Sugarman, Richard Hunt, Leon Golub, and Louise Nevelson, as well as Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) print curator Riva Castleman.^[9]

Edwards spent several years in the early 1960s experimenting with different welding techniques,^[15] eventually buying his own equipment and setting up a studio in a garage that Hill owned.^[9] In 1963 this experimentation resulted in a small relief sculpture titled Some Bright Morning, comprising a shallow cylindrical form accented by bits of steel, a blade-shaped triangle of steel, and a short chain hanging from the piece with a small lump of metal at its end. This work became the first in his Lynch Fragments series.^[15] Edwards said the title of the piece was a reference to a story from Ralph Ginzburg's anthology 100 Years of Lynchings, a compilation of reports on lynchings in the United States published the year prior.^[16] The named story relays the narrative of a black family in Florida whose white neighbors had threatened to come to the property on "some bright morning" in order to kill them; the black family armed themselves and fought back, hiding in nearby swamps and staging several attacks on the would-be lynch mob.^[17] Inspired by the turmoil of the Civil Rights Movement, these small-scale welded-metal wall reliefs were developed in three periods: 1963 to 1967, 1973 to 1974, and 1978 to the present.^[18][19] Edwards created the series as metaphor of the struggles experienced by African Americans.^[20] A variety of metal objects are employed as the raw materials for these works, including hammer heads, scissors, locks, chains, and railroad splices.^[12]

Edwards traveled to New York for the first time in 1963, visiting MoMA after having heard that it was possible to meet well-known artists working as guards.^[21] The first person he met at the museum was the artist William Majors, a member of the African-American art group Spiral.^[21] On his trip to the city he also met artist Hale Woodruff, another member of Spiral, and showed Woodruff several of his Lynch Fragments sculptures.^[14]

In 1965, he began teaching at the Chouinard Art Institute (now known as the California Institute of the Arts) until 1967.^[22]

His first one-person exhibition of sculpture was held in 1965 at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.^[14] He exhibited several of his Lynch Fragments sculptures, along with the first iteration of a work titled Chaino which consisted of a small metal assemblage suspended in midair with chains attached to the walls and a metal rod hanging from the ceiling; he later built a metal armature for Chaino so it could be displayed suspended without the need of a wall or ceiling rod.^[23] Writing in Artforum, critic David Gebhard positively reviewed the exhibition, saying that "Perfection of workmanship and a full understanding of material has been united with the formal content of each work."^[24]

Also in 1965, Sugarman had a New York University art exhibition, which Edwards photographed for him.^{[citation needed]} At that exhibition, Edwards met Al Held and asked him for a job and Held pointed him to a recent Yale University graduate, painter William T. Williams.^[25] The two artists went on to have a very close partnership that continues to this day.^{[26][better source needed]}

Edwards' work was included in the historical survey exhibition The Negro in American Art, organized by art historian James Porter at UCLA in 1966. Artist Sam Gilliam was also included in the exhibition, and the two became friends and colleagues after Edwards saw Gilliam's work.^[27]

He moved to New York City in 1967.^[28] Additionally he taught at Orange County Community College in New York (1967–1969), and the University of Connecticut (1970–1972).^[2][29]

Smokehouse (also known as Smokehouse Associates, Smokehouse Collective, Smokehouse Painters) was a New York City-based community "wall painting" initiative created in part by Melvin Edwards and William T. Williams, spanning from 1968 until 1970.^[30][31] The project existed as a social experiment asking the question: "Can abstraction solve social justice?"^[22] The wall paintings consisted of hard-edge graphics and geometric patterns,^[22] occurring between 120th Street and 125th Street of Harlem. The project was born out of pondering on how the 19th-century tradition of stacking houses affected the human psyche and Edwards believes there to be a strong correlation between living spaces and the lives of people. He mentions this in an interview at the Soul of a Nation Symposium in 2018, stating: "If you change places, you can change the lives of people."^{[26][better source needed]} Edwards wanted the public to participate in the way cities were developing. In every project, Smokehouse would hire someone elderly within the community and someone young.^{[citation needed]}

These murals never surpassed 16 feet in scale, due to the height restrictions of the initiative's ladder. Nevertheless, Smokehouse painted alleyways, tops of buildings, and sides of buildings. William T. Williams handled the logistics of the organization.^[25] As the project continued, MOMA patron Celeste Bartos and David Rockefeller underwrote these projects. The more recognition they received, the bigger people wanted them to go; however, they did not feel comfortable going too large.

121st and Sylvan still have the annual tradition of doing a community-based mural project because of Smokehouse.^[25][32]

In June 1969, Edwards, Williams, and Gilliam exhibited their work together with William's former classmate Stephan Kelsey at the Studio Museum in Harlem for the exhibition X to the Fourth Power.^[33] Edwards, Williams, and Gilliam, all African American artists making abstract art, would go on to stage several additional exhibitions as a trio in the 1970s.^[34]

Also in 1969, Edwards met the artist Frank Bowling, a painter who shares his interest in making art that is primarily abstract, a position that would become contested as members of the Black cultural and artistic community called for art to serve as a site of political empowerment. Bowling made a work that referenced Edwards, titled Mel Edwards Decides (1968).^[35]

Edwards cited jazz music as an influence on his work.^[36]

In 1970, Edwards took his first trip to Africa, visiting the West African republics of Nigeria, Togo, Benin, and Ghana.^[12] This trip influenced his work, and was followed by other visits to Africa over the years.^[12] During the 1970s, he participated in a community art space called Communications Village, operated by printmaker Benjamin Leroy Wigfall in Kingston, NY. Andrews made prints with the help of printer assistants who had been taught printmaking by Wigfall, and Edwards exhibited there.^[37]

In 1972, he began teaching art classes at Livingston College of Rutgers University (now part of the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences).^[38] By 1980, he was a full professor and teaching at the Mason Gross School of Creative and Performing Arts at Rutgers University.^[38] By 2002, he retired from teaching.

The Studio Museum in Harlem hosted Edwards' first retrospective exhibition in 1978, which included a set of his Lynch Fragments sculptures, works from his Rockers series, and a large steel work dedicated to the recently deceased poet Léon-Gontran Damas, whom Edwards had met via Cortez.^[39] The exhibition received very little critical attention; the director of the museum, Mary Schmidt Campbell, said that "It was like nothing, like the show didn't happen... It was scary."^[39]

Edwards is also known for smaller freestanding works, the kinetic "Rockers" series.^[40] Works from the Rocker series include, Homage to Coco (1970), Good Friends in Chicago (1972), Avenue B (Rocker) (1975), Memories of Coco (1980), A Conversation with Norman Lewis (1980), among others.^{[41][better source needed]} These moving sculptures are inspired by his memories, including one of him falling off his grandmother's rocking-chair and another as a homage to his friendships. Edwards used the term "syncopate" to describe the interaction while rocking, and the relationship of syncopation in African-American music.^[41]

Edwards is also known for works executed in the medium of printmaking.

He has completed a broad array of large-scale, public sculpture commissions. His public sculptures include: Homage to My Father and the Spirit (1969), installed at Cornell University's Appel Commons; Homage to Billie Holiday and the Young Ones of Soweto (1976–1977), installed at Morgan State University's James E. Lewis Museum of Art;^[42] Out of the Struggles of the Past to a Brilliant Future (1982), installed at Mt. Vernon Plaza apartment complex in Columbus, Ohio;^[43] Breaking of the Chains (1995), installed on San Diego harbor-front's Martin Luther King Jr. Promenade;^[44] and David's Dream (2023), installed outside the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park.^[45]

Edwards has participated in a large number of solo shows in the United States and internationally. His solo shows include Melvin Edwards (1965), Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California; Melvin Edwards: Sculptor (1978), Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Sculpture of Melvin Edwards, SculptureCenter, New York; Mel Edwards: Lynch Fragment Series (1985), Robeson Gallery, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey; and Melvin Edwards (2022), Dia Beacon, Beacon, New York.

A 30-year retrospective of his sculpture was held in 1993 at the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York,^[46] and a 50-year retrospective titled Melvin Edwards: Five Decades was held in 2015 at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas.^[47][48] Melvin Edwards: Crossroads, an exhibition of 23 sculptures and installations, exploring the cross-cultural connections in the artist's work, was presented at the Baltimore Museum of Art from 2019 to 2020.^[49]

He has also participated in many group exhibitions, including the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), Havana Biennial (2019), and Afro-Atlantic Histories (2018, 2021–2022).

Edwards was married in 1960 to Karen Hamre; together they had three children.^[12] In 1969, the couple separated; Hamre and the children stayed in Los Angeles while Edwards had already moved to New York City.^[25]

In 1976, Edwards married the poet Jayne Cortez.^[50] Cortez and Edwards worked together: he illustrated her first book Pissstained Stairs and the Monkey Man's Wares (1969), and she wrote a series of poems to accompany her husband's work Lynch Fragments.^[36][25]

His art studios are located in upstate New York and in Plainfield, New Jersey, and he often travels to Dakar, Senegal.^[3]

• 1975 – awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.^[51]
• 1984 – grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).^[52]
• 1988 – Fulbright Fellowship to Zimbabwe from 1988–1989.^[52]
• 1992 – elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate, and became a full Academician in 1994.
• He received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) in 2014.^[53]
• He is the subject of the 2016 documentary film by Lydie Diakhaté, entitled Some Bright Morning: The Art of Melvin Edwards.^[54]

• List of African-American visual artists

• Edwards, Melvin (1982). "Lynch Fragments". In Buhle, Paul; et al. (eds.). Free Spirits: Annals of the Insurgent Imagination. San Francisco: City Lights Books. pp. 95–96. ISBN 9780872861282. OCLC 8629174.
• Kenny, Lynne (1993). "Chronology". In Gedeon, Lucinda H. (ed.). Melvin Edwards Sculpture: A Thirty-Year Retrospective, 1963–1993. Purchase, New York / Seattle: Neuberger Museum of Art / University of Washington Press. pp. 129–139. ISBN 9780295973005. OCLC 28161746.
• Sims, Lowery Stokes (1993). "Melvin Edwards: An Artist's Life and Philosophy". In Gedeon, Lucinda H. (ed.). Melvin Edwards Sculpture: A Thirty-Year Retrospective, 1963–1993. Purchase, New York / Seattle: Neuberger Museum of Art / University of Washington Press. pp. 9–19. ISBN 9780295973005. OCLC 28161746.
• Binstock, Jonathan P., ed. (2005). Sam Gilliam: A Retrospective. Berkeley, California / Washington, D.C.: University of California Press / Corcoran Gallery of Art. ISBN 9780520246454. OCLC 58594996.
• Arnold, Leigh A. (2015). "Catalogue of Public Sculptures". In Craft, Catherine (ed.). Melvin Edwards: Five Decades. Dallas: Nasher Sculpture Center. pp. 180–189. ISBN 9780991233830. OCLC 904049795.
• Craft, Catherine, ed. (2015). Melvin Edwards: Five Decades. Dallas: Nasher Sculpture Center. ISBN 9780991233830. OCLC 904049795.
• Moura, Rodrigo (2018). "Lynch Fragments: Pieces of Life, Shards of History". In Pedrosa, Adriano; Moura, Rodrigo (eds.). Melvin Edwards: Lynch Fragments. São Paulo Museum of Art. pp. 8–13. ISBN 9788531000515. OCLC 1061526860.

• Pincus-Witten, Robert (May 1970). "Melvin Edwards". Artforum. Vol. 8, no. 9. p. 77. OCLC 20458258. Archived from the original on November 20, 2023. Retrieved December 16, 2024.
• Gregg, Gail (February 1995). "Poetry in Heavy Metal" (PDF). ARTnews. Vol. 95, no. 2. pp. 104–107. OCLC 2392716. Archived (PDF) from the original on September 15, 2015. Retrieved December 16, 2024.
• Merjian, Ara H. (November 2010). "Melvin Edwards". Artforum. Vol. 49, no. 3. OCLC 20458258. Archived from the original on November 20, 2023. Retrieved December 16, 2024.
• Ostrow, Saul (December 2010). "Melvin Edwards". Art in America. Vol. 98, no. 11. OCLC 1121298647. Archived from the original on September 26, 2024. Retrieved December 16, 2024.
• Granberry, Michael (January 30, 2015). "Melvin Edwards' Nasher exhibit inspired by social upheaval". The Dallas Morning News. OCLC 1035116631. Archived from the original on December 16, 2024. Retrieved December 16, 2024.
• Smart, Lauren (February 16, 2015). "Melvin Edwards on Sculpture: 'It's Like Making a Baby.'". Dallas Observer. OCLC 7095491. Archived from the original on April 1, 2016. Retrieved December 16, 2024.
• Godfrey, Mark (May 2015). "Melvin Edwards and Frank Bowling in Dallas". Artforum. Vol. 53, no. 9. OCLC 20458258. Archived from the original on September 1, 2024. Retrieved December 16, 2024.
• Diakhaté, Lydie (Winter–Spring 2016). "Melvin Edwards: The Poetics of the Blacksmith". Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire. Vol. 16, no. 1. pp. 130–142. OCLC 34971120. ProQuest 1799217500.
• Gilson, Nancy (February 4, 2016). "Retrospective features Melvin Edwards' work depicting civil-rights struggle". The Columbus Dispatch. OCLC 8736947. Archived from the original on December 16, 2024. Retrieved December 16, 2024.
• Schwabsky, Barry (July 17–24, 2017). "Do Something With It: The ambiguous sculptures of Melvin Edwards and Rachel Harrison". The Nation. Vol. 305, no. 2. OCLC 1643268. Archived from the original on April 23, 2024. Retrieved December 16, 2024.
• McQuaid, Cate (January 24, 2018). "The strength, and beauty, of steel". The Boston Globe. OCLC 66652431. Archived from the original on April 28, 2024. Retrieved December 16, 2024.
• Jassan, Alejandro, ed. (2019). Melvin Edwards: Painted Sculpture. New York: Alexander Gray Associates. ISBN 9780578604220. OCLC 1137340955.
• Haigney, Sophie (May 4, 2021). "Sculpted in Metal, Stories of History and Identity Take Shape". The New York Times. sec. S, p. 2. OCLC 1645522. Archived from the original on December 25, 2022. Retrieved December 16, 2024.
• Booker, Eric, ed. (2022). Smokehouse Associates. New York: Studio Museum in Harlem. ISBN 9780300267204. OCLC 1309868119.
• Siegel, Harmon. "Melvin Edwards". Artforum. Vol. 61, no. 10. OCLC 20458258. Archived from the original on April 1, 2024. Retrieved December 16, 2024.
• Moore, Charles (October 1, 2024). "Melvin Edwards's Sculptures Bow Under the Weight of History". frieze. OCLC 32711926. Archived from the original on October 2, 2024. Retrieved December 16, 2024.

• Melvin Edwards website.
• Edwards, Melvin (November 24, 2014). "An Oral History with Melvin Edwards by Michael Brenson". Bomb (Interview). Interviewed by Brenson, Michael. OCLC 61313615. Archived from the original on November 26, 2024. Retrieved December 15, 2024.
• Catherine Craft, "Conversations with Melvin Edwards", Nasher Sculpture Center.
• Green, Tyler (February 5, 2015). "No. 170: Melvin Edwards, Gohar Dashti". The Modern Art Notes Podcast (Podcast). Retrieved December 16, 2024.
• "Melvin Edwards' steel sculptures reveal a history of racial violence". PBS News Hour. March 29, 2016. Retrieved December 16, 2024.