Take part in a highly personal and evocative tour of the critically acclaimed exhibition “Winfred Rembert: Amazing Grace,” with the artist himself, the day before the show closes at the New Haven Museum.
“Winfred Rembert: Amazing Grace,” is the first major retrospective of New Haven resident Winfred Rembert, whose art on leather conveys his compelling personal narrative of joy and struggle during the tumultuous moments of the American Civil Rights Movement.
Organized by the Hudson River Museum, in Yonkers, New York, and opened there in January of 2012, “Winfred Rembert: Amazing Grace” has traveled to museums in South Carolina, Texas, Michigan and Alabama. The New Haven Museum exhibition features 25 works and a 12-minute excerpt from the documentary of the artist’s life, “All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert,” which was directed and produced by Vivian Ducat.
About the Artist
Growing up in 1950s rural Georgia, Rembert endured backbreaking labor in the cotton fields, an arrest during a 1960s civil-rights march, and near lynching. As a prisoner serving a seven-year sentence, he learned to tool leather by watching a fellow inmate create wallets. Years later, adding color on tanned leather, Rembert created an art form emphasizing two contrasting worlds: one of incredible brutality, the other of strong community and personal connections. Rembert arrived in New Haven in the mid-1970s, where he and his wife Patsy raised eight children while navigating the complicated socio-political and economic landscape so typical of late 20th-century urban life. During the 1990s, after several years working as a longshoreman and heavy machine operator, work became increasingly scarce for Rembert, and the family struggled to make ends meet. Rembert began to make his colorful tooled and dyed leather works at the age of 52, and the first sale of his work took place in 1995.
About the Exhibition
“Winfred Rembert: Amazing Grace” is curated by Bartholomew F. Bland, deputy director of the Hudson River Museum. The show is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue of essays by Bartholomew F. Bland; Roger Panetta, History Professor, Fordham University; Ellen Keiter, Chief Curator of The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art; Clifton Watson, Director, African American Male Initiative (The Children’s Aid Society); and Irma Watkins-Owens, Associate Professor, African and African American Studies, Fordham University.