Try and walk a mile in her shoes
Quotes and Black Art | Thursdaysº
Quotes and Black Art
Your Curated Art Museum
“Come for the art, stay for the quotes.”
“Letting the streets have you is like planning your own funeral. I wanted the streetlight brights, the money in the morning, not the back alleys. Not the sirens. But, here we are. Streets always find you in the daylight, when you least expect them to. Night crawling up to me when the sun’s out.” — Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling, 2022
A Snippet:
Did you know that at age sixteen, while a student at Oakland School of the Arts, Leila Mottley was chosen as Oakland’s 2018 Youth Poet Laureate and, four years later, her stunning 2022 debut was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, making Mottley (at the time) the youngest author to have been nominated for the award?
Learn more . . .
Quotes and Black Art
Thursday, March 12, 2026 (week 60)
“Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.”
— Harriet Jacobs
178. “Bobby Seale” (2020-2021) by Karon Davis
Artist and sculptor Karon Davis (b. 1977)—known for her unique plaster method and life-size casts taken from friends and family, as well as her own body—on depicting Bobby Seale bound, gagged, and chained to a chair in a Chicago courtroom in October 1969:
“I had to take two shots of tequila and I cried. I thought of all the Black folk who have been gagged, who have been silenced.”
179. “Servant And Child” by Edwin Augustus Harleston
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868 - 1963) praising and co-signing Charleston, South Carolina, painter Edwin Augustus “Teddy” Harleston (1882 - 1931) in the early 1900s:
“The leading portrait painter of the race.”
180. “Between The Two My Heart Is Balanced” (1991) by Lubaina Himid
British artist and curator (Lubaina Himid (b. 1954)—who in 2017 became the first Black woman to win the prestigious Turner Prize, annually awarded to the top British visual artist—on being recognized for one’s achievements:
“The point I am often exploring vis-à-vis the Black experience is that of being so very visible and different in the White Western everyday—yet so invisible and disregarded in the cultural, historical, political or economic record or history.”
The Silver Lining?
During this Women's History Month, let us practice listening to the many women in our lives -- for there is much to be said and much to learn.
(Breathe In . . . Breathe Out)
Try and walk a mile in her shoes
Quotes and Black Art - A Newsletter
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