Jones-Henderson, who has an alert, steady gaze and a good handshake, was in Syracuse for the first of two Ford Foundation-sponsored artist-in-residence workshops for young people he’s teaching at the Community Folk Art Center (CFAC). Charles, CFAC’s managing director, said he’d be back before then too, for a group exhibition celebrating the 40th anniversary of the continuously active AfriCOBRA collective. Willets, CFAC’s academic director, helped bring Jones-Henderson’s exhibition, “Requiem for Our Fathers and Other Warriors,” here in 2006 for CFAC’s first gallery opening in the new building, a joint show with documentary photographer Marjory Wilkins. Donaldson died at age 71 in 2004, and several “Liberated Images” pieces commemorate him Murry DePillars’ “Lifting the Plate” and James Phillips’ “Flowers for Jeff. Harris have work in “Liberated Images,” that each readily agrees could function as ancestor shrines Henderson-Jones’ dwelling-like sculptures for Duke Ellington, June Jordan, the “3 Little Girls” (the 1963 Birmingham church bombing), and Harris’ “Survivor Patchwork,” which also employs a peaked roof form and, like other of his assemblages, arrangements of talisman-like objects that Harris photographs. read more

Tags: images, work, african, art, africobra, harris