Cullen Washington Jr.

10-28-16
On October 27 I attended an artist talk given by Cullen Washington Jr who is a mixed media artist that was brought to the University of Nevada, Reno by one of our grad students.  His work revolves around searching for the truth and that the answers lie within us.  A lot of his artwork explores the language of abstraction in order to help answer these questions.  All through his BFA he would ask himself “who am I?” The answer he began with was that he was a black man whose race began as slaves.  To represent this answer he showed a portrait of a black woman from his Mastery of a Slave Series.  The main form that is seen in Washington’s paintings and works is the shape of the square because he sees the world as a grid that can be peeled away, folded forward and back, and as it is peeled away what’s revealed is darkness.  He talks about how the grid is a metaphor for the scaffolding that holds the material world together and this is what he is trying to take a part.

He continued to show his work of how he would use oil paint on an un-stretched canvas before hanging it up.  I thought this technique was really interesting and just really cool. This technique can be seen in his Space Notation Series in which the canvas is stretched and folded so much that the grid/bars that the canvas would be stretched over are exposed, what he considers as the structure of the universe.  Everything that Washington creates has a meaning and question behind it.  His painting The Man of Steel is of a boy that has a cape of a crushed toy car.  He is combining the blacksmith with superman and he talks about how much he likes to tear things and often uses torn pieces of cardboard.  He is always finding a way to incorporate his surroundings into his paintings as well as thinking of a specific idea that is being represented.  One example of this is Star Wars and 3rd Street  in which a bicycle can be seen and is meant to represent freedom  as well a majority of things can be seen from his surrounding of Louisiana.  There is also a boy that seems to be looking into space and wondering what is up there, this could perhaps be a small representation of what Washington feels as he continues to question the world.

Other influences can be seen in Cullen Washington's work such as a tin can that is shaped to look like the a helmet fro the television show Fat Albert.  During his talk, Washington also talked about his sculpture, in which he is still asking and trying the answer the question "who am I?"  His sculpture Worm Hole is that of a two basketball hoops that are connected with pot-scrubbers and wire.  It is meant to represent that of a portal.  As Washington continues to make his paintings and sculpture he is constantly asking questions.  He noted in his talk that he tries to tear things a part as much as he can and asks if it would still be considered a painting.  Due to the tearing he is often left with a collage painting that he continues to change until he is satisfied with the piece.

I enjoyed attending Washington's talk and his paintings, especially when he showed what a painting looked like before it was stretched over the grid bars. This talk included pieces that aren't on his online portfolio, so I feel like if I hadn't attended this talk there would have been many things that would have gone unmentioned and unknown to me.  Also, due to his paintings being that of a collage but still having some recognizable images in them, I feel that seeing these works for the first time on a projected screen did not do them justice in how they are made and I hope to one day see them in person to really be able to look up close and really see some of the process that Cullen Washington Jr uses when creating his paintings.