Eight Artists Address Brown v. Board of Education :: Art Exhibit

Social Studies: Eight Artists Address Brown v. Board of Education I ignore the first room, there is an African American, I assume a student, listening to his c.d. player and taking notes of the first few photographs. I am overwhelmed by this illuminating neon glow, and continue into the next room. I find that I am alone, for the most part, but I am being watched. Literally by a security camera in the southeast corner, but mostly by the oversized photographs and paintings. I feel uncomfortable and I almost want to leave, but there’s a paper that I need to write and I want to revisit some things. Something catches my eye on the northeast wall and I am reintroduced to 3 chromogenic prints from Carrie Mae Weems’s â€Å"For Roses, for Daisy,† from Days Long Forgotten. The first and last are a close aerial view of roses. I can’t tell what color they are because the photos are in black and white, but they’re still beautiful. The middle picture is somewhat larger; there are two African American children. They’re sharing a tight space, but seem to be comfortable with each other. I ask myself why Weems used black and white film, and the only thing I can think of is that the roses, no matter what their colors, are beautiful. And the children are human, which is a beauty in itself. I come to the conclusion that there isn’t a certain race that is more beautiful than another. I am white, and that is beautiful. I have friends from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds, and they are beautiful as well. I decide not to read any of the authorâ⠂¬â„¢s bios or explanations in the brochure I picked up until the end. I guess I’m afraid of judging the works before I even take a chance to look into them myself. In time a read that â€Å"For Rosa, for Daisy,† â€Å"forgoes the imagery of struggle in favor of a pastoral iconography of flowers and children†¦ [The photos] offer an idyllic world of private beauty and repose that contrasts with the public record of strife and oppression† (O’Brien, 5). In her series â€Å"May Days Forgotten† she photographs the girls inside of nature, sometimes in floral prints. I find that her ideas to combine the aspects of natural beauty, from the girls to the flowers and to nature, are breathtaking.