Artist Dedria Humphries Barker

The Friends are excited to welcome artist Dedria Humphries Barker to the Brick Wall Gallery in May. Humphries, a recipient of the 2022 Cultural Arts Grant Program, generously donated several pieces to the Friends of the East Lansing Public Library. Ms. Humphries pieces displayed at the library are for sale and all proceeds will benefit the Friends and the library.

Ms. Humphries’ Artist Statement -

My project Blue People is my view of mass incarceration in the U.S., and the situations it presents for people who live behind walls of all kinds.  We are all prisoners of something, from aardvarks in the zoo, to families eating pizza. Black and brown people are especially targeted for lock-up of our bodies, minds and feelings.  Because of skin color. Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow (2010), ratcheted-up my awareness of mass incarceration. I had to put that book down several times before I finished it. The breathtaking-feeling that I was in the belly of the beast was overwhelming. When I started to draw during the 2020 COVID pandemic, my work started channeling my understanding and feelings about being a prisoner in ordinary life situations, and brick and mortar prisons.

Still, my art is different and fresh, engaging without being fatiguing. That is important -- no, it’s essential to people's lives. My palette references African kente cloth; and popular and folk culture touchstones in American video, music, and theater. And is influenced by Kokopelli, a Native American fertility deity, Jon Lockard (1932 -2015), Titus Kaphar; Georgia O’Keefe, African America artists Grace Kisa and Elizabeth Catlett, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, and Camille Sproesser of Argentina.

My special thanks to: 

Mr. Michael D. Barker                           

Ms. Lisa Bond-Brewer

Mrs. Mary Jane Humphries

 Dr. Richard Wendorf

The artist’s work will also be displayed at downtown East Lansing’s Blue Owl Coffee throughout the month of June.

Dedria Humphries Barker is the author of Mother of Orphans: The True and Curious Story of Irish Alice, a Colored Man’s Widow