John Outterbridge

It is a powerful and humbling experience to view a retrospective of nearly three decades of creativity by John Outtterbridge - griot, teacher and artist. It was a courageous and tenacious decision of commitment to allow himself to become a vehicle, a path, an inter-mediary who chose to visually interpret the African-American experience in genres unacceptable to popular mainstream ideologies. These two Kongo proverbs help to give some insight into the intricate, layered complexities of Outterbridge's own philosophy where he seeks knowledge to " . . . Give me the courage to know the things of life that I may be worthy of my place. Above all teach me to share the gift."

In te aftermath of the Middle Passage, Africans lost the precise sound and meaning of their language. Traditional objects were forbidden to be made and if make images, only fragments of memory were left to the New World Africans. Those individuals who found opportunity to evolve as artists became pioneers creating new visual traditions in a new world, as new people with an uncertain political and belief in the Spirit of the Creator, African-American artists began the arduous task of making objects in a wide range of innovative genres to reflect the profound experience of their humanity in this alien land. John Outtterbridge is a pioneer who has become one of the pivotal "archaeologists" and "architects" responsible for the construction of a viable and authentic aesthetic rooted in an African legacy.

Outtterbridge, like many black artists of the 20th century, paid a severe price in that the work he created did not conform to any mainstream traditions dominant in Eurocentric values. As a result, his opportunities for exposure were limited to alternative spaces often lacking the high profile of museums and galleries with national and international reputations. His role as a griot and teacher then became critical to his survival as an artist and essential to the communities he served throughout his career.

Another African proverb states that it takes a whole community to raise a child. John Outtterbridge is the sum of that reality. Through each developmental phase of his life, from his birth in Greenville, North Carolina, a European tour of duty in the United States Army, the American Academy of Art in Chicago, and directing two urban community art centers in Compton and Watts, California for over twenty years, Outtterbridge has remained an undaunted, prolific artist deeply grounded in the realities of his culture and his community. While forced to function from the marginalized periphery of the art world at large, Outtterbridge in fact found a liberation edge of freedom to express his true visions and inspire those who sought to share that Knowledge. Ironically, this profile typifies the role of most artists who evolved from African-American communities across the United States.

During the great migration of blacks at the turn of the century and especially after World War I, major cities in the United States paid little attention to the almost hyperactive energy produced by localized self-help groups. Cities such as Harlem, Chicago, Cleveland, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., the Oakland-Bay area and Jacksonville, Florida saw the rise of art organizations that sponsored activities for all ages in the African-American communities. Artists like Jacob Lawrence, Robert Blackburn, Hughie Lee-Smith, Dpx Thrash, Augusta Savage and Sargent Johnson were all involved on community-based arts organizations sponsored by churches, after school programs, kibraries the YMCA and the YWCA, sororities, fraternities, civic groups. and later the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the 1929s-1940s. Self-help groups, until the advent of the WPA, were trhe backbone of assthetic creativity and energy of the black communities of America.

These centers reaffirmed the critical importance of learning and creative expression in positive, nurturing environments almost exactly as this concept had been practiced on the continent of Africa. Older black artists mentored and inspired yougher artists to make objects and express their individual creativity.

Outterbridge is a product of this experience. After his service in the army, he moved to Chicago in 1956 to study at the American Academy of Art. Chicago was a hotbed of creative energy. There he came in contact with the dean of African-American Museum of History and Culture. The Southside Art Center and numerous intellectuals and artists provided a supportive network for the development of critical issues always confronting the black artist as they tried to define a place for themselves in a society resistant to their presence.

In 1965, two years after he relocated to California, Outtervridge moved to Altadena, just outside of Los Angeles, in the height of the civil rights era. The black communities of America were actively involved in a united case of dissent in the face of racist policies and opportunities still denied. An exceptional circle of artists, scholars, writers and musicians began to push through and beyond the existing boundaries of traditional visual thinking of that era. Young artists such as Kavid Hammons and later Houston Conwill began to test the edge of monoprints, performance, music, dance and installation. Noah Purifoy began to regenerate found and discarded objicts in to sculpted assemblage. Mel Edwards, Betye Saar, John Riddle, Suzanne Jackson, Elliot Pinkney, Dan Concholar and Van Slater experimented with their own definitive idioms.

Concurrent with this camaraderie of artistic influences, John Outterbridge began to teach at the Compton Communicative Arts Academy and the Watts Towers Arts Center in the mid-1960s. This was an intensely fertile period of growth for artists of African descent as they moved to establish more aggressively active organizations with political agendas. In 1963 Romare Bearden and Norman Lewis founded Spirl, a New York-based art organization and gallery. The following year, Weusi, another artist organization in Harlem, emerged. Some of its members included Ademola Olugebefala and James Phillips.

In 1968 AFRI-COBRA(African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) emerged in the quake of the creation of the now in famous mural, "The Wall of Respect." Some of its artists included Jeff Donaldson, Wadsworth Jarrell, Carolyn Lawrence, Barbara Jones-Hogue, Frank Smith and Napoleon Henderson-Jones. Each oif these centers of activity acted as a catalyst for the other groups. They were inspired and motivated to reestablish their presence and vitality within their own communities. This was a critical factor in the reconnection of their sense of identity and responsibility to their communities.

John Outterbridge's entire formative experience was shaped by the momentum of this force of spiritual, political and aesthetic self-determination. The central themes in this retrospective address issues of containment, survival, ethnicity, and freedom/mobility. The thematic context of his image-making grew out of a profound response to the discarded materials and objects that abound in American society, especially in environments that are treated as wastelands. The Containment Series emerged n the afterstorm of the Watts riots on the 1960s. Found objects, leftovers, trash, junk became the new medium of expressiveness for Outterbridge. The Rag Man Series personified the symbolic and metaphoric reality of human beings forced to make viable lives of significance and meaning from scraps of cloth. The Ethnic Heritage Group confronted the problem of identity and ancestry for a people still denied their cultural affirmation in a country still sttruggling to come to terms with the holocaust of slavery and malignancy of racism. The use of automobiles in his Ethnic heritage Group became the conduit of change, transition and evolution. The conditions and refuse of urban blight became the spark of innovation for Outterbridge's assemblages. Shifra Goldman has suggested that "For Outterbridge (as for other Los Angeles Black artists), the roots of assemblage were not only the Pop Movement, but accumulative African religious art forms" as well as the Watts Towers of Simon Rodia, which were created from discarded materials.

This point of reference should be expanded to a wider level of discourse. African Americans have always had to deal with the discards of society in order to survive. The very root of their experiences were grounded in the quilts that mothers made from scraps and fathers who hauled junk by hand, in wagons and pick-up trucks. The community made these artists what they have become today.
California has often been called the last frontier of Manifest Destiny. John Outterbridge stands as an artist with a specific world view clearly shaped by the specifics of his unique cultural experiences. His contributions have yet to be included in the complex and often contradictory arena of 20th century American visual traditions.

Leslie King-Hammond, ph.D.