Courtesy of The Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club
Artist: Judy Bowman
Title: I Matter Too
Collage
23" × 18"
Judy Bowman is a mixed-media collage artist who was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. Her art practice centers on exalting America’s Black culture. Bowman’s use of vibrant hues, textured paper and acrylic paint illuminates’ narratives that move beyond institutional racism and disparaged perspectives of the Black experience–a view in which America too often limits the full picture. Considering herself a visual griot, she sees her job to tell stories that are reflective of her coming-of-age in Detroit’s Eastside and Black Bottom neighborhoods. Scenes in her vibrant collages depict love, community and a type of fellowship that resides in jazzy nights, the sway of young Black women and the swag of young Black men, church on Sundays followed by family dinner, family outings and cultural dignity and richness.
Bowman’s work appears in private and public collections–nationally and internationally–including the Institutional and Permanent Collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit Historical Museum, Mack Alive, Sarasota African American Cultural Coalition, Sarasota, Florida; The Free Press building, Detroit, Michigan; R.W. Norton Art Gallery/ Museum, Shreveport, Louisiana; Georgetown University Library, Booth Family For Special Collections, Washington DC, US Department of State, Art Bank Program, Washington, DC; and the Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, Michigan.
Bowman is a 2021 Kresge Fellow in Visual Arts and a 2022 Local Alain Locke Recognition Awardee.
ABOUT THE DETROIT FINE ARTS BREAKFAST CLUB
The Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club started as a weekly conversation between two art lovers over pancakes and eggs. Since then, the breakfast of two has become a dinner of hundreds (pre-pandemic). Harold Braggs and Henry Harper founded the group in 2009. The group meets every Monday at 5 p.m.. Artists, art collectors, and art lovers gather online to discuss, sell, and collect fine art. Anyone and everyone is welcome. To learn more follow the group on Facebook.