This page has tags:

1. 1 2016-11-22T15:28:24-08:00 Amy Lyford 7f58938a63eff8db4092d452d1f6451c2056d580 John Outterbridge Bio Allison Wendt 49 Artist Bio John Outterbridge structured_gallery 350856 2016-12-01T23:08:45-08:00 Allison Wendt 5f609f9e327122da9a07a273744d9e6d158702fc

This page is referenced by:

• 1 2016-11-22T15:28:24-08:00 John Outterbridge 14 Landing page and bio for artist John Outterbridge structured_gallery 2016-11-29T16:06:55-08:00

   

      John Outterbridge (b. 1933 Greenville, NC), is an important Los Angeles based artist working primarily in assemblage. 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.
  Outterbridge became the director of the Compton Communicative Art Center which received state and local funding to teach community classes in art of all disciplines. After working at the CCAC, Outterbridge took up the role of art director at the Watts Towers Art Center in the early ‘70s following Noah Purifoy. Community involvement meant that Outterbridge was not distantly connected to black radicalism. Education was a contested arena as proven by the shooting of Southern California Black Panther Party president Bunchy Carty at UCLA by another black radical organization when he was helping coordinate leadership for a  new Black Studies Program. Outterbridge has said that “in a way we were all panthers,” of his involvement in arts education programs in Compton and Watts. 
   In the early 1970’s Outterbridge worked with the city of Compton to develop an arts education program called Compton Communicative Art Academy (CCAA) and several years later in 1975 took the role of art director at the Watts Towers Art Center. During the time he made "Traditional Hang-Up" Outterbridge was steeped in the evolving culture and struggles of the African-American community in L.A. Community involvement meant that Outterbridge was not distantly connected to black radicalism. Outterbridge said of his involvement in arts education programs in Compton and Watts that, “'in a way, we were all panthers.'” 
      While in many ways Outterbridge’s work as an educator fit neatly within black nationalist constructs of community organizing and empowerment, his allegiance was not exclusive and he was also a participant in the cultural nationalism which frequently butted heads with the former. “A Traditional Hang-Up” reflects this less than later works of his which use more African motifs and deal with spirituality and psychological history of African-Americans as much as and more than those works dealt with militarism. 
  Much of Outterbridge’s work deals with oppressive realities facing the black community in Los Angeles including quickening impoverishment as a result of deindustrialization, police brutality, job discrimination, and a deficit of educational and artistic resources. The Watts ​Rebellion that broke out in August of 1965 greatly influenced Outterbridge, especially because of his relationship to Noah Purifoy whose work in the 66 Signs of Neon exhibition marked the beginning of a commitment to both community building and assemblage. Made in 1969, Outterbridge’s sculpture “A Traditional Hang-Up” was fabricated during a time of extraordinary anger towards the illusion of nationhood that obscured the starkly different and often brutal reality lived by African-Americans.
  Outterbridge’s understanding of nationhood reflected a broad ideology which took into account the experiences of African Americans more holistically, but this understanding was complimented by personal experience of serving in the army at age 19 and seeing many neighbors and friends going off to serve the American military. Outterbridge recounts in an interview that the American flag was dubious because of its use in support of white supremacy, and also expresses pride in the flag’s role in his life. The many African-Americans to serve the military, many of whom died and then a flag was returned to the families who frequently hung them in windows to commemorate their loved one, were influential in his understanding of the American flag as something which could obscure reality, but also as a symbol which could be taken back. This nuance is reflected in “A Traditional Hang-Up.”