| Melvin
Edwards (1937 - )
Melvin Edwards was raised in Houston, Texas. His artistic talent
was recognized at an early age, and he was encouraged to study
the works of European old masters at the Museum of Fine Arts.
He won a football scholarship to the University of California
at Los Angeles but rejected a professional athletic career to
become an artist. Edwards developed a life-long interest in African
art after seeing a Fang sculpture on a teacher's desk one day. "Eye
to eye," he wrote, "African art is like a deep conversation
with family." His welded sculptures are often inspired by
political issues, ranging from civil rights to African-American
identity. In 1993 Edwards won the grand prize of the Fuji-Sankei
Biennial in Japan, and in 1995 his work was included in the Cairo
Biennial.
Melvin Edwards's works in steel often address political issues
of historic and/or contemporary concern for the African American
community. Edwards describes the Lynch Fragment Series as a "private
conversation," which, unlike his public works, is meant
to create a "one-on-one" experience between object
and viewer. This series, begun in 1963, speaks to the threat
of lynching as a powerful controlling tool of a racist society.
Like other works in the series, Edwards uses welded steel forms
that evoke the shapes of farm implements, weapons, and shackles
of bondage to powerfully remind us of the violence and horrors
of lynching, which survived as common practice in the country
until almost the middle of this century. "I decided that
the forms should hang on the wall," Edwards explained, "because
hanging was symbolic." Each piece is individually named,
and each seeks to invoke both historical memory of this vigilante
practice and the malignancy and power of lynching as a constant
threat for so long in black Americans' experience.
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