BARBARA BULLOCK (1938 - ) The Houses of Molu (The Journey series).
Collage, flashe paint, acrylic, and gold leaf on watesrcolor paper, 2002. 1184x876 mm; 46 1/2x34 1/2 inches.
Provenance: private collection, Virginia.
Additional works from The Journey series are in the permanent collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
As an Africanist, Barabara Bullock invokes ancestral spirits by constructing assemblages that question identity, belief, gender, and the artistic process. Her work is informed by myths, literature, and symbols from Africa and the African diaspora; her African studies inspire collages composed of a silhouetted cacophony of shapes.
Born and raised in North Philadelphia and Germantown, PA, Bullock trained at the Fleisher Art Memorial from 1956-59, the Hussian School of Art from 1963-66, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. As an educator, advisor, and artist, Bullock has led classes at museums, schools, and prisons, including the New Jersey Council-funded Arts Horizon. She has executed commissions for the Philadelphia International Airport, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, SEPTA, and the Village of Arts and Humanities. Bullock has been recognized as a Distinguished Teaching Artist by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in 1997 and 2001, received a 1997 Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Visual Arts Residency Grant, and a Leeway Foundation Bessie Berman Grant. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Lafayette College, Philadelphia International Airport, Jane Voorhees Zimmer Art Museum, Rutgers State University, Leeway Foundation, Philadelphia and the African American Museum in Philadelphia.
