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Black Arts at Oxy

From Left to Right: John Outterbridge, Alonzo Davis, and Dan Concholar (1971)

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John Outterbridge Bio

John Outterbridge (b. 1933 Greenville, NC) is a Los Angeles based artist working primarily in assemblage sculpture. Outterbridge 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,’” which demonstrates his sympathy for revolutionary black nationalism as well as the general attitude among peers like Noah Purifoy towards art as a means of social change.

On one hand, Outterbridge’s work as an educator fit neatly within revolutionary black nationalist constructs of community organizing and empowerment. Revolutionary nationalists like the Black Panther Party focused on separatism in the form of black social and economic independence from white Americans, and they attempted to maintain a somewhat uniform internal identity (at some point denigrating symbols of Africa) to achieve their goals. On the other hand, Outterbridge's actual work makes use of African motifs and references to reconstructed black cultural mythology as well as black spiritual practice which is often seen in his dolls and fetishes (many alluding to Gullah culture). His work aligns more closely with black cultural nationalism which was active in seeking social change but contrasted with radical nationalism, because it emphasized the importance of reconstructing some cultural and historic lineage which had been 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. (see Alprentice Carter) and nationwide; however, the distinction between the two which put them at odds was somewhat artificial. John 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 at the gallery Art + Practice in Leimert Park. Several of his works also were shown for four months from 2011-2012 at the Hammer Museum as part of the exhibition Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980.

This page created by Vanessa Todd and Allison Wendt in December 2016.
John Outterbridge Interview
m (CAAM). Outterbridge, an innovative assemblage artist, is also well known and venerated as a teacher and arts administrator.
   Outterbridge, served as director of the Watts Towers Arts Center from 1975 to 1992. Prior to that, he was artistic director of Communicative Arts Academy in Compton. He was an art instructor and fine arts installer at the Pasadena Museum of Art from 1967 to 1972. He also has taught at Cal State Dominguez Hills, Pasadena City College and is founder of GOCART (Gallery of Children’s Art).
   Known primarily for his sculpture using recycled materials and for frequently addressing social and political issues, Outterbridge credits his father with teaching him to value discarded materials. He began painting while in the army. After leaving the service, he attended the Chicago Academy of Art and the American Academy of Art, also in Chicago. A native of Greenville, North Carolina, Outterbridge left Chicago for Los Angeles in 1963. He gave up painting for sculpture after settling in Los Angeles. Exhibited and recognized throughout the world, Outterbridge has received numerous awards, including the 1987 National Conference of Arts Educators Award; a 1988 Fulbright Fellowship; and in 1994, he received the J.R. Hyde Visiting Artist Fellowship at the Memphis Institute of the Arts, J. Paul Getty Fellowship for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and an honorary doctorate from
   Mark Steven Greenfield currently serves as director of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery for the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
   Admission to this lecture and all CAAM events and exhibitions is free. CAAM researches, collects, preserves and interprets for public enrichment the history, art and culture of African Americans. Located at 600 State Drive in Exposition Park, the museum is open to the public Tuesday-Saturday 10am-5pm, and Sundays 11am-5pm. For information, call 213.744.7432 or visit www.caamuseum.org.
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John Outterbridge, Alonzo Davis, and Dan Concholar
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