“Lost and Found, 2013, is about Sun Ra, space travel, my experience as a boy in Virginia witnessing a locust storm. It was biblical to me, it was religion.
The jar is filled with locusts, land, my grandparents, family.
I was exposed to August Wilson’s work between classes at the Atlanta College of Art. From Fences to Jitney, I felt the black sensibility of his plays witnessing to me. I wanted my work to shadow those sensibilities.”
— Radcliffe Bailey
(b. 1968)
Radcliffe Bailey is a contemporary American artist noted for mixed-media, paint, and sculpture works that explore African American history. Although trained as a sculptor, Bailey works within the convergence of painting and sculpting. Thematically, his artwork explores the intersection of ancestry, race, and cultural memory. In 2003, he adopted a style inspired by spiritual-invested Kongo minkisi. His “medicine cabinet sculptures” are three-dimensional and layered. Bailey is based in Atlanta.
August Wilson, 2004. Photo by David Cooper.