Lula Mae Blocton: The First Two Decades, 1970-1990

Press Release

Lulan Mae Blocton moved from Michigan to a loft near Cooper Union in 1972.  From her first entry into the art world,nBlocton has been fighting for acceptance and visibility of the LGBTQ communitynand the Black and feminist communities. As she remarks: ?There have been twonconstants in my life: a love of art?formal, precise, abstract?and a concern fornhuman dignity and civil rights.? Like many Black abstractionists, Blocton wasncriticized for eschewing figuration, for not painting scenes contributing tonthe political conversation. Nothing could have been further from the truth.nIndeed, she claimed abstraction as a right, not the preserve of a privilegednfew. For her, thoughts about color were as concrete as they were political,npersonal, and spiritual.  In time,nBlocton would propose that colors, black, white, and beyond?the entire lightnspectrum?could evoke, metaphorically, the palette for an inclusive society.

Blocton?sncolor grids of the 1970s explore the full color spectrum and are at timesnreminiscent of textile patterns.  Hernclose observation of weavings brought to her paintings an understanding ofnoverlay and colored edges. The hues are lively and rich, the compositionsndreamy. In her drawings, the textures are fuzzy and delicate, reminiscent ofnmohair. In the paintings, light seems to get caught in the brushstrokes. Onenfeels the evocation of sunsets, summer lights, dawns, overcast atmosphericnskies, all captured in a grid. Despite their abstraction, Blocton?s 1970?sncompositions refer to the atmospheric light of New York City and other sites. The artist sensibility found inspiration in the shift of lights viewed throughnher windows. In these paintings luminosity comes from the back of the picturenas it does in a stain glass. Light manifests itself as a movement through thencolors and influences the color gradations. Blocton’s palette shows already thensophistication of a great colorist: her grays have greens, her red oranges, hernblues pinks, and her white blues.

In the 1980’s with the Twisted Forms, Transparent Bands series, Lula Blocton entered a phase of horizontal expansion. Space became the center of thenexploration. She remembers ?In this series, I aimed to create images that wouldnexpand the viewer?s perception of space into multiple dimensions.? The worksnexpressed a new level of energy and dynamism. To extend their reach, Bloctonnstarted producing multi-panel works. The artist took on the polyptych inndifferent formats: diptychs and triptychs on canvas and, occasionally,nquadriptych on paper, by combining sheets. The three-dimensional illusionismnin this series is remarkable. It combines sculptural modeling to effects ofntransparencies and light reflections. To compose these works, Blocton set upnstill lives in her studio with rolls of translucent paper and color grid worksnset up behind them. The results are drawings and paintings of incrediblenprecision level. These works are made from observations and scrutiny of thenobjects in front of the artist, in the same way Renaissance masters worked andnPicasso set up his cubist guitars. Blocton demonstrates impeccable techniquenand sense of rhythm in these playful and masterful rendering of reality, whichnappear completely abstract. Lula MaenBlocton b. 1947 is Michigan-born and traces her heritage to a rural communitynnear Selma, Alabama. She earned an MFA from Indiana University and retirednas an Emeritus Professor at Eastern Connecticut State University in 2014. Shenlives and works in Connecticut.

Barbara Stehle, Ph. D

Curator

This exhibition coincides with, and celebrates the release of a new publication Lula Mae Blocton: African American Experience through Color andnPattern, a 225-page monograph with autobiographical text by the artist and anninsightful essay by Dr. Barbara Stehle. Published by Palestine Books, it presents an overview of her work  from the 1970s until today. The artistnwill sign copies of the monograph at the reception.

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