A true friend helps you experiment

Quotes and Black Art | Thursdaysº

Jafari Joseph

Apr 30, 2026

Quotes and Black Art

Your Curated Art Museum

“Come for the art, stay for the quotes.”

“I nodded. There were many suggestions. Everyone wanted to make me better, but we couldn’t even name the problem.”

— Victor LaValle, The Ecstatic, 2002

A Snippet:

Did you know that many of Victor LaValle’s fictional characters battle mental health challenges within his works?

As the author has stated, “Mental illness has absolutely been one of the fundamental concerns of my early work . . . but even more so because I’ve got a few generations of family members who’ve dealt with clinical issues of mental illness and so, inevitably, it’s become a part of my world view.”

Learn more . . .

Quotes and Black Art

Thursday, April 30, 2026 (Edition 10)

28. “A Friend” (2012) by Lorna Simpson

NYC Photographer and multimedia artist, Lorna Simpson (b. 1960)—long considered a pioneer of conceptual photography—on the importance of experimenting:

“It gives me pause when people ask me what I do, because there are so many different avenues that my work has gone down . . . I’ve always left it open as to how I work in different mediums and try not to put too many boundaries on what I do. It’s more about experimenting or the process of making that matters.”
- Lorna Simpson

29. “Screaming Into The Ether” (2020) by Gary Simmons

NYC artist Gary Simmons (b. 1964)—known for his “erasure drawings”—on embracing helping hands throughout the artistic journey:

“As a young artist, there’s certain things that happen along the way; it’s not just you. There are instructors and people along the way that help you get to where you are, and you have to at least acknowledge that.”
- Gary Simmons

30. “The Safety Patrol” (2018) by Bisa Butler

New Jersey fiber artist, Bisa Butler (b. 1973), famous for creating quilts that look like paintings, on mastering the value scale:

“I’m really interested just in the value scale: What is light? What is medium? What is dark? And what is the deepest dark?”
- Bisa Butler

You don't have to carry it all alone.

Taurean Birthdays!

(April 20th - May 20th)

April 26 - Tionne ‘T-Boz’ Watkins
April 27 - Coretta Scott King
April 27 - Lizzo
April 29 - Duke Ellington
April 29 - Master P
April 30 - Travis Scott (today)!
May 1 - Trenton Doyle Hancock
May 2 - Dwayne ‘The Rock” Johnson

(Breathe In . . . Breathe Out)