Charlotte Ka: REFLECTIONS
From March 12 through April 30, 2022, the Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba is pleased to present Reflections, an exhibition of 21 encaustic and collaged paintings by African American artist, Charlotte Ka, completed between 2000 and 2021. This important exhibition features work created from a variety of perspectives that are composed using many distilled techniques.
Charlotte Ka is a child of the Great Migration. Her family moved to Crestas in the hills of Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh to work in the Steel Mills. Both her father and grandfather worked in the caustic environment of the mills. Her mother was a beautician. In the 1960s she left her small village for New York City to study art at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. She says, “New York was my home during the Black Revolution of the 60’s and I was inspired by that period of defiance, “Black Power” and the adoption of the culture of the Motherland, Africa. I totally immersed myself in a new lifestyle that included my African American and African heritages.“
She also discovered the innovation of the free jazz of this time and loved to go to the Five Spot to hear Mingus and to Slugs on the Lower East Side to hear wonderful jazz musicians such as Miles, Lee Morgan, Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Beaver Harris and Archie Shepp. “The music was cosmically rich and vibrant, and my art practice is inspired by those concepts of innovation and improvisation.”
“The inspiration for my art making is the love of art, music and dance. This foundation of culture and art has infused my current artistic milieu. My acrylic paintings celebrate the magic of dance from its beginnings in Africa, through the ring-shouts of the enslaved to its present-day function of joy and passion.” Of her approach, Charlotte Ka says, “I improvise, adapt and experiment with non-traditional materials: wood, glass beads, wax, gold leaf, ground rubber, photo transfers, micas and glitters. I work with acrylic paint and layers of colors and mica over collage. This layering process makes symbolic references to my magnificent, African and African American ancestral heritages.
Charlotte Ka has been able to develop paintings that represent a culmination of her experiences—an accretion of her associated studies, at Carnegie Mellon University, at the Maryland Institute College of Art, in printmaking, at the Corning Glass Museum, and at the Sculpture Center that are now forged into an authentic style of her own. The finished paintings have a brilliance of color, tactile qualities, and radiance with a determined and precise resolution.
Kenkeleba programs are made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council and many generous friends. The exhibit is supported by Advancing Black Art in Pittsburgh - Heinz Endowments.
