Blued (the blues + glued)
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Quotes and Black Art
Your Curated Art Museum
“Come for the art, stay for the quotes.”
“It is blasphemy to separate oneself from the earth and look down on it like a god. It is more than blasphemy; it is dangerous. We can never be gods, after all—but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.” — N. K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, 2010
A Snippet:
Did you know that N. K. Jemisin is the first writer to win three successive Hugo Awards for Best Novel—plus, the first to win for every single work in a trilogy!?
Learn more . . .
Quotes and Black Art
Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026 (week 59)
It’s Black History Month 2026 - Let’s Get To Work
175. “Blued” (1998) by Sonya Clark
Professor of Art at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, artist Sonya Clark (b. 1967) on celebrating traditional African unions and holy matrimonies:
“This piece was inspired by carved wooden African headrests made for married couples. It’s an older work, and in fact I started the work just around the time that my husband and I decided that we wanted to be married. Often those African headrests would have a linkage between them—a chain—that would stand in for unity and connection. Here, the chain can also stand in for that shared history and heritage of coming from people who were once free, and then enslaved, and then had the resilience to become free again and again and again, and fighting against any sort of un-freedom. The title comes from the color blue, as in the blues and the musical tradition, and the word ‘glued’ as in coming together.”
176. “He Was Not Asking for Alms” by Emmett Wigglesworth
Muralist, painter, sculptor, fabric designer, poet and civil rights activist, Emmett Wigglesworth (b. 1939) on the risks of misguided art:
“You can affect people, you can touch people. And it doesn't matter whether you’re talking about a hundred thousand, a hundred million, or one. But you gotta believe in what you do, and the way you do it and, above all that, you’ve got to be aware that what you’re doing is to better humanity. Because if you don’t, then you may do something that may destroy humanity—which is how art is being used in many places today.”
177. “You Don’t Have to Tell Me Twice” (2023) by Mark Bradford
Los Angeles based artist Mark Bradford (b. 1961) on whitesplaining:
“One of the ideas that I’m really interested in promoting is that we, like any other people, can and should be allowed to be private and not have to explain our stories through figuration. We should have the right to be abstract. Why not?”
The Silver Lining?
"Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins." This is the greatest fruit you can produce: To love one another.
(Breathe In . . . Breathe Out)
Blued (the blues + glued)
Quotes and Black Art - A Newsletter
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