PLEASANTVILLE, NY.- The Gordon Parks Foundation has announced its 2023 fellowship recipients: Artists Jammie Holmes and José Parlá are Fellows in Art, and art historian and scholar Melanee C. Harvey as the Genevieve Young Fellow in Writing. Since 2017, the fellowship program has championed individuals who share the foundation’s dedication to advancing Parks’s vision for social change through the arts and humanities. Each recipient receives $25,000 to support new or ongoing projects that explore themes of representation and social justice. The 2023 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellows will be celebrated at the annual Gordon Parks Foundation Awards Dinner on May 23, 2023 in New York City.
“This year’s art fellows are both painters whose work moves Gordon Parks’s legacy forward in important ways, while Melanee’s writing fellowship project at Howard University brings forth an important new historical context to his work,” said Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Executive Director of The Gordon Parks Foundation. “We are proud to support the thought-provoking, innovative work of Jammie, José, and Melanee.”
The Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship programs were established to grant the same vital support that Parks received early in his career to contemporary artists and writers who are continuing his legacy of using art to enact social change. In 1942, Parks was awarded the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, a grant which allowed him to move to Washington D.C. and apprentice under Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration (FSA). This opportunity set the course for Parks’s 60-year career documenting American life through powerful photographs and iconic films, becoming one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century. The annual fellowships support the development of new or ongoing projects that explore themes of representation and social justice, and are in historical dialogue with Gordon Parks’s work. Fellows participate in a wide range of Foundation initiatives and programs throughout the year, culminating in a solo exhibition at the Gordon Parks Foundation.
The Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship in Art
The Gordon Parks Foundation awards two $25,000 fellowships in art annually to support artists working in a variety of fields and mediums in the development of new or ongoing projects that explore themes of representation and social justice, and are in historical dialogue with Gordon Parks’s work.
2023 Art fellow Jammie Holmes creates intimate, complex paintings that foreground themes and experiences of Black life. Originally from Thibodaux, Louisiana and now based in Dallas, Texas, Holmes is a self-taught artist. His paintings incorporate portraiture, symbols, text, and objects that depict the celebrations and struggles of everyday life, particularly the contemporary American South.
"I'm honored to join the family of Gordon Parks Fellows,” said Holmes. “Gordon Parks's courage in capturing moments of everyday life has been a long-time inspiration to me as an artist and individual. I am excited to explore Parks's legacy and bridge the gap between his work and contemporary perspectives."
Holmes is joined by José Parlá, who has been working for more than twenty-five years to establish a style of painting that transforms the language of the street into a hybrid form of abstraction and urban realism. Born in Miami, Florida to Cuban parents, Parlá has sought to interpret his experience of cities that have served as crossroads in his life, by engaging with the rich history of abstraction in painting.
"Gordon Parks's unique approach and message have paved the way for many to clearly see the issues of civil rights, race relations, poverty, and urban life,” said Parlá “His work continues to inspire me, and I am honored and privileged to receive the Gordon Parks Foundation Art Fellowship."
The Gordon Parks Foundation has awarded 12 fellowships in art since 2017. Previous fellows include Bisa Butler and Andre D. Wagner (2022), Nina Chanel Abney and Tyler Mitchell (2020), Guadalupe Rosales and Hank Willis Thomas (2019), Derrick Adams and Deana Lawson (2018), and Devin Allen and Harriet Dedman (2017).
Genevieve Young Fellowship in Writing
Launched in 2022, The Gordon Parks Foundation's Genevieve Young Fellowship in Writing awards one annual $25,000 fellowship to a writer working in a variety of fields including art history, journalism, and literature. This year, the Fellowship in Writing is awarded in partnership with Howard University, celebrating the acquisition of a collection of photographs by Gordon Parks that represent the arc of his career over five decades. The Fellowship will support research and writing by a Howard University professor and act as the foundation for a series of programs that will celebrate this historic acquisition.
Writing fellow Melanee C. Harvey is an associate professor of art history at Howard University. She will embark on a project that investigates the social structures and sites of religious practice documented across Gordon Parks’s photographs from the 1930s to the last quarter of the twentieth century. An exhibition mounted at both the Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery and Howard University will be enhanced by collaborative programming hosted by the University.
"Receiving the support of the Gordon Parks Foundation marks a significant milestone in my study of the visual culture of Black religion and spirituality but also in the practice of photo history at Howard University,” said Harvey. “Across this year-long fellowship, I am excited about the opportunity to study Parks’s photographic practice through The Gordon Parks Legacy Collection as well as the rich collection of historic African American photography at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University. This support from the Gordon Parks Foundation helps to extend and augment the legacy of photo history at Howard University.”
The Genevieve Young Fellowship was established last year in honor of the legendary book editor, who was also Gordon Parks’s creative partner and estate executor. Young was also instrumental in the creation and development of the Gordon Parks Foundation beginning in 2006, and served on the Foundation’s board from 2006–20. Writing in particular was central to Parks’s work, a means of expression that broadened the reach and impact of his perspective.
2022 Fellow Bisa Butler Exhibition to Open at Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery
Next month, the Gordon Parks Foundation will present Materfamilias, an exhibition by 2022 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellow Bisa Butler, a textile artist. The exhibition will run February 1–April 14, 2023 at the Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery, located at 48 Wheeler Ave in Pleasantville, NY.
Butler creates quilted works inspired by photographs – portraits composed entirely of fabrics and textiles in vibrant colors and patterns that reimagine and celebrate Black life. For this exhibition, the culmination of her 2022 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship, she has created quilts inspired by, among others, photographs by Gordon Parks.
