Talley Dunn Gallery

Over five years in the making, "Higher Ground" is a true tour de force by Huckaby, encompassing multiple installations that embrace the artist’s decades’ long connection to community, humanity, struggle, and spirituality. “I use art as social engagement. I use it for building up communities, I use it as a way to bring about positive change and to uplift . . .” From his grandmother’s kitchen table to the painted portraits of Ms. Opal Lee to the video installation commemorating the 1921 lynching of Mr. Fred Rouse in Fort Worth, Texas to over one hundred painted portraits of the community members of Nacimiento, Mexico and more, Huckaby’s "Higher Ground" spans generations of personal experience, history, connection, and importance. Having received the Fulbright Fellowship in 2022, Huckaby traveled to Nacimiento, Mexico in 2023 with the intention of creating one hundred portraits of people in the community in the span of four months. With his travel easel in hand and an interpreter at his side, the artist went from house to house in this small Mexican town, sitting down with each person to hear their story and create their portrait from life. He soon realized that he was not just creating portraits of people, but rather, a portrait of a community. “To acknowledge their presence, their work . . . just to sit down and do a portrait and listen to somebody. For me, it becomes an act of celebrating that person.” Huckaby’s one hundred portraits in this exhibition of the people of Nacimiento, Mexico depict a community deeply connected to their history, preserving their roots, customs, and connections to their Black lineage as well as celebrating the holiday of Juneteenth. In the mid-1800s this community’s ancestors, free Black Seminoles known as Mascogos fled through the southern Underground Railroad to Mexico where slavery had been strictly outlawed and in search of freedom. They founded the town originally known as El Nacimiento de los Negros and in an agreement with the Mexican government they agreed to protect the U.S. Mexican border from the invasion of American slave catchers and Texas Rangers who were crossing the border into Mexico in order to capture formerly enslaved people. In return, Mexico agreed to give the Mascogos citizenship and their own land. Huckaby traveled to this remote town in Mexico through his Fulbright Fellowship to experience the essence of the community members who, despite immense time, distance, and difference, cherish the same day of freedom that others celebrate in the United States. Through this heroic series of one hundred paintings on view in Higher Ground, Huckaby seeks to tell a tale of a community, shared legacy, and continental history. “When creating portrait from life with a sitter, I am seeing their heart, seeing who they are, knowing their aspirations . . . I bring the studio art practice directly into social engagement.” Huckaby’s tremendously moving video projection installation, "Contemplating Fred Rouse" and "Portrait of Fred Rouse," pays tribute to Mr. Fred Rouse who was publicly lynched in Huckaby’s hometown of Fort Worth, Texas in 1921. With no known images of Mr. Rouse, Huckaby created a video projection capturing his repetitive drawings of male figures being erased and redrawn, progressing from older men to his teenage son. As community research was done on Fred Rouse and his family, Mr. Rouse’s grandson was located in Fort Worth, Texas. With no knowledge of his grandfather’s fate, Fred Rouse III learned of his grandfather's tragic death. With the descendants of Mr. Rouse discovered, Huckaby created a second film, "Portrait of Fred Rouse," based upon portraits of Mr. Rouse’s son, grandson, and great grandson. “Then there is that engagement with the sitter that is beautiful and thoughtful and creative and then there is the opportunity for thoughtful change . . .” In the Project Gallery, Huckaby has created a site-specific installation entitled "Black Bird Redemption Song," consisting of fifteen caged black birds sculpted by the artist along with drawings of black birds. Housed in antique cages too small for the birds themselves, Huckaby reflects upon the history of incarceration within the Black Community in America. “Every struggle has its ups and downs of life and eventually goes through the very place that you are standing.” In Huckaby’s sculpture and installation, "Portrait of Craig Watkins," the artist recognizes and celebrates the legacy of the legendary Dallas Attorney who made history as the first elected African American District Attorney in Texas. As the Dallas District Attorney, Watkins created the first Conviction Integrity Unit in the nation resulting in 35 wrongly convicted individuals being freed under his administration. Watkins worked to resolve cases of wrongful conviction through the use of DNA testing and the review of evidence illegally withheld from defense attorneys. In this exhibition, Huckaby’s six foot five inches tall, life-size sculpture of Mr. Watkins is surrounded by mixed media works of drawings and papers representing the thirty-five men that Watkins freed.