Houston Conwill

Houston Eugene Conwill (April 2, 1947 – November 14, 2016) was an African-American artist known best for large-scale sculptural installations.^[1] His work has been collected by the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and other major institutions.^[2] Conwill earned a BFA from Howard University in 1973, followed by an MFA from USC in 1976.^[3] In 1982 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for fine arts. In 1984 he won the American Academy in Rome's prestigious Rome Prize.^[4] He died on November 14, 2016, of prostate cancer.^[5]

Early life

Houston Conwill was born on April 2, 1947, in Louisville, Kentucky, to Mary Luella Herndon and Giles Adolph Conwill. He was the third of their six children. His father died when he was a child and his maternal grandmother (Estella Houston, who he was named for) played an important role in his upbringing. Conwill was raised Catholic, his mother a teacher and administrator at a predominantly black parochial school. His sister Estella Marie Conwill Majozo is an author, poet, and professor. At least one of his brothers, Giles Conwill, went on to join the priesthood. For a time, in his late teens, Conwill lived in a monastery in St. Meinrad, Indiana. He joined the Air Force in 1966 where he served three years until the fall of 1970 when he enrolled in Howard University's Art Department. During his time at Howard, Conwill worked with Sam Gilliam, Lois Mailou Jones, and Skunder Boghossian, and took in the displays of traditional African art exhibited in Howard's gallery. It was here, and in his first student exhibition in 1971, that Conwill started making works with canvases stretched over pyramid shapes, a motif that would recur throughout his artistic career.^[6] Conwill graduated from Howard in 1973 and moved with his wife, fellow Howard art school graduate Kinshasha Holman Conwill, to California. Houston pursued his master's degree from University of Southern California^[7] and Kinshasha worked at curator of Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House, where they lived for two years.^[6]

Significant works

In 1989, Conwill produced an installation piece for the Museum of Modern Art's series, Projects, called The Cakewalk Humanifesto: A Cultural Libation. An etched-glass frame, reminiscent of the rose window at Chartres, was etched with words and maps, projecting patterns on to the marble floor of the gallery. The piece also featured a table on which rested a book of letters, written by his sister, Estella. Readings of the letters were a component of the exhibition.^[8]

Perhaps Conwill's most prominent work is his terrazzo and brass floor design at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Unveiled in February 1992, the floor honors poet Langston Hughes whose ashes are buried in a book-shaped urn within the design. The work is called Rivers, in reference to Hughes's poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", and includes visual elements from Yoruba, Haitian voodoo, and Christian traditions. Conwill again collaborated with his sister, Estella, as well as architect Joseph De Pace.^[9]

References