Life's Ponderings: Afro Puff Girl

Afro Puff Girl

I wasn't able to take a lot of photos on the opening day of Black Women in Clay at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art. It was so busy with friends, new gallery patrons, and such. But at some point, I saw this young Black woman crouch down to look Afri Puff Girl squarely in the face and at her little book she held. I saw curiosity, smiling, and just joy.

It made all the work here worth it. I grew up at a time when we Black folks saw NO images of yourselves anywhere except Little Black Sambo and pickaninnies, Stephinfetchits, and stereotypical buffoon characters.

I don't know if white folks can imagine never having seen a positive image of oneself, friends, or family anywhere!!! It leaves Black people hungry, starved, desperate to see themselves mirrored in a landscape of white faces in a richly pictured forest, while around you, as a Black person, your own personal desert, barren, no life, no color, just emptiness everywhere you look.

It is image desolation.

It is white society telling you that you are absolutely unnecessary to exist. Unless you are configured in an image, they make up - and that image is always fucking wrong!!!

As women raised to see beauty in ourselves, Black women and girls were shown they were ugly as hell. Hair is too kinky and brown. Nose too wide. Lips too full, hips too shapely, feet too big, clothes too scruffy, intelligence non-existent. It is amazing that the Black community after Reconstruction didn't unalive themselves because media, literature, and life were too damnably depressing from the white world.

But our ancestors created something out of nothing. They found ways to feed the spirits through bits and pieces of our shredded ancestral roots through creativity. In the 1930s, things began to change slowly. During the Civil Rights movement, things began to pick up. I saw my first Black children's book in the early 1980s. I was enthralled!

We are still starving.

Which is why Afro Puff Girl was born.

It was nice to see this young Black woman recognize a piece of herself in a loving little portrait of a little Black girl doing something as simply profound as reading.

That made my day!

#Blackart #heritage #Chiildcuriosty #perspective #creativity

Recognition

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Christine "Liz" Larue

Artist Bio

Christine “Liz” LaRue is a clay artist and illustrationist. She is known for her intricately textured figurative sculptures and emotionally illustrative drawings. Chicago-born, though also raised in Utah and Idaho, Ms. LaRue is of Creole/Cuban descent. Her art has been influenced by her Afro-Latino heritage. Ms. LaRue’s interests have been in pre-Columbian art of the Olmec, Maya of Mexico, Nazca, and Moche face pots of Peru. This also includes the bronze sculptures of the Ife of Nigeria and Tā Moko tattoo art of the Maōri.