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1. 1 2016-11-29T12:31:40-08:00 Vanessa Todd d44a174f5c0bf51566a0822429f8a0c533cf973b John Outterbridge and Troy Robinson Allison Wendt 3 plain 2016-11-29T12:48:16-08:00 Allison Wendt 5f609f9e327122da9a07a273744d9e6d158702fc
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• 1 2016-11-22T15:28:24-08:00 John Outterbridge Bio 54 Artist Bio John Outterbridge plain 350856 2016-12-01T23:16:13-08:00
  John Outterbridge (b. 1933 Greenville, NC) is a Los Angeles based artist working primarily in assemblage. Outerbridge has been an influential educator, community activist, and participant in the Black Arts movement in Southern California throughout his ongoing career. He took up this role soon after moving to Los Angeles upon graduating from the Academy of Art in Chicago. Much of Outterbridge's work deals with oppressive realities the black community faced (and continues to face) in Los Angeles, including quickening impoverishment as a result of deindustrialization, police brutality, job discrimination, and a deficit of educational and artistic resources. The 1965 Watts Uprising greatly influenced Outterbridge particularly because of his relationship to Noah Purifoy whose work in the exhibition 66 Signs of Neon marked the beginning of a public commitment to community building and his assemblage work.
   
  In the early 1970’s Outerbridge worked with the city officials to develop an arts education program at the already existing Compton Communicative Art Academy (CCAA) which received state and local funding to teach community classes in across all art disciplines. The Academy collapsed in 1975 due to inadequate funding after white flight from the area created an economic vacuum which made many public projects in Watts and Compton impossible.
  
  In 1975 Outterbridge succeeded Noah Purifoy as art director of the Watts Towers Art Center. The Watts Towers Art Center held enormous sway in the black community in L.A. as an alternative form of self-governance and self-determination. Community involvement meant that Outterbridge was not far removed from black radicalism. Education was a contested arena as proven by the shooting of Southern California Black Panther Party president Alprentice Carter at UCLA by another black radical organization when he was helping coordinate leadership for a new Black Studies Program. When asked about his involvement in arts education programs in Compton and Watts, Outterbridge has said, “‘in a way, we were all panthers.’”
  
  On one hand, Outterbridge’s work as an educator fit neatly within revolutionary black nationalist constructs of community organizing and empowerment; revolutionary nationalists focused on separatism and a somewhat uniform internal identity to achieve their goals. On the other hand, Outterbridge's actual work, with its African motifs and references to black mythology/spiritual practice, aligns more closely with cultural nationalism whose ideology rested largely in reconstructing a cultural and historic lineage which was stripped of black people during slavery. The division between revolutionary and cultural nationalism was a source of significant conflict and debate within the black community in L.A. and nationwide; however, the distinction between the two which put them at odds was somewhat artificial. Outterbridge assumes a unique place at the junction of revolutionary and cultural nationalism. His career and work reveal a symbiosis between these two branches of black activism during the Civil Rights era.
  
  Outterbridge continues to live and work in L.A. and recently showed his exhibition called Rag Man the gallery Art + Practice in Leimert Park.