A Landmark of Work: African Americans in Decorative Arts

How are artists currently using traditional or historical methods of production in contemporary design? Artists and art historians discuss the pivotal contributions of African Americans to the canon of decorative arts like textile design, jewelry and metalworking, and woodworking. Panelists include artists, Robert Paige and Norman Teague, and Art Conservator and Researcher, Lamar Gayles. The conversation will be moderated by writer, educator, and Radicle Curatorial Resident, Rikki Byrd.

About the Moderator:

Rikki Byrd is a writer, educator, and curator who works across the academy, arts, and fashion industries. She has participated in curatorial projects with the South Side Community Art Center, Block Museum of Art, SkyART, and most recently curated the fashion presentations in the traveling exhibition The Culture: Hip Hop & Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, co-organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art and Saint Louis Art Museum. Her forthcoming project Lawrence Agyei: DRILL opens at Blanc Gallery and Expo Chicago in April 2024. Her research focuses on Black aesthetic practices including fashion, performance, and contemporary art, and she has lectured at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis. She is the founder of the Black Fashion Archive and co-founder of the Fashion and Race Syllabus. Her writing appears across exhibition catalogs, academic journals, books, and arts and fashion media such as Hyperallergic, Cultured, and Teen Vogue. Rikki is currently completing her PhD in the Department of Black Studies at Northwestern University. Her work has been supported by fellowships and residencies from the Modern Ancient Brown Foundation, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, University of Chicago’s Arts+Public Life, and the Presidential Fellowship at Northwestern University.

About the Panelists:

Robert Earl Paige

Robert Earl Paige (b.1937, Chicago) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and educator actively making work that challenges the distinction between fine art and craft by combining elements from African aesthetic traditions, modernist painting, Bauhaus architecture, and vernacular invention in his objects, collages, and fabrics. He earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and began his career working for the architectural design firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill before transitioning to creating commercial objects and fashion. He has partnered with commercial enterprises such as the Italian fashion house Fiorio and Sears, Roebuck and Co. department stores to produce scarves and interior decor respectively. His signature line the Dakkabar Collection was sold nationwide in over 100 stores and included several bedroom and home furnishing pieces inspired by West African imagery with a contemporary palette in the 1970s.

Early in the Black Arts Movement, Paige participated and believes strongly in its ideology of community participation in art and culture, which continues to be of focus in his pedagogy today. He has taught art and design principles to youth through Gallery 37 and is a frequent lecturer with the nomadic Black Arts Movement School Modality. Paige has been an artist-in-residence for many organizations, including the Cabrini Green neighborhood alliance, DuSable Museum of African American History, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (New York), Ndebele Foundation (South Africa) and Hyde Park Art Center. Works by Robert Paige have been exhibited at Salon94 Design and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, and in Chicago at the SMART Museum of Art and the Chicago Cultural Center, among others.

Norman Teague

Norman Teague is a designer and educator who focuses on the complexity of urbanism and the culture of communities. He specializes in custom furniture design and designed objects that deliver a personal touch and/or function. Past projects have included consumer products, public sculpture, performances, and designed spaces. He takes pride in working within communities that offer ethical returns and human-centered exchanges.

Norman has participated in exhibitions and discussions at Chicago Architecture Center, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, Documenta 13, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Hyde Park Art Center. He holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Columbia College Chicago. He and Fo Wilson co-founded blkHaUS studios to work on collaborative projects like Sounding Bronzeville, Connect Hyde Park, and South Shore and Back Alley Jazz. Norman was awarded the Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Foundation Prize for Emerging Artists in 2015. Hw is presently a creative collaborator with the exhibition design team for the Obama Presidential Center.

Lamar Gayles

LaMar Gayles (a native son of the South Side of Chicago) is an archaeologist, independent curator, material culture scholar, and technical art historian. He is currently enrolled in the PhD program in Preservation Studies at the University of Delaware. Gayles completed a MA in Museum and Exhibition Studies from University of Illinois at Chicago while holding two separate positions: Archive and Collections Manager at the South Side Community Art Center and Executive Director at the Union Street Gallery. Gayles earned a Cum Laude BA with a triple major (art history, archaeology, and ethnic studies) from St. Olaf College. He has researched and curated exhibitions on Black American material culture and its historical progressions from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first century. Gayles’s research methodology combines archaeometry, arts-based research, conservation science, art historical analysis, ethnography, historical reproduction, and technical studies to explore material and visual culture.

About the Exhibition

The largest exhibition of Robert Paige’s work to date, The United Colors of Robert Earl Paige, surveys the iconic textile designs and painted fabric of one of the most generative artists/designers from the South Side of Chicago. In addition to the fabric work made over the past sixty years, the exhibition will debut recent clay, wall/floor paintings, drawings, and collage work made during his Radicle Residency at Hyde Park Art Center in 2022-23.

The exhibition, corresponding public program and upcoming catalog is part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.