Artist Al Bostick weaves stories, triumphs and sadness of African-Americans into his work
I am accused of tending to the past
Poem by Lucille Clifton
I am accused of tending to the past
As if I made it,
As if I sculpted it
With my own hands. I did not.
This past was waiting for me
When I came
A monstrous unnamed baby
And I with my mother’s itch
Took it to breast
And name it
History
She is more human now,
Learning languages every day,
Remembering faces, names and dates.
When she is strong enough to travel
On her own, beware, she will.
Hanging in the NBC Oklahoma’s new location at NW 63 and Western Avenue in Oklahoma City is a painting rich with imagery that requires some explanation. Artist Al Bostick is happy to help guide you through the symbolism he incorporated into his work: He also is an accomplished storyteller who wants people to know history, especially the part that belongs to his family, some who came to America as slaves from Africa.
A poem by Lucille Clifton – “I Am Accused of Tending to the Past” – inspired the work, and the painting is his way of making sense of his past with its roots in Africa and that of the African American experience in this country. Bostick’s ancestors settled in Louisiana, where Bostick grew up; he lives in Oklahoma City now.
Bostick talks of all of this past without bitterness but as a way to teach and help people come to an understanding of a dark part of U.S. history.
“Well, you can't be bitter because it is a factual piece of history,” said Bostick, who also spends his time telling stories and working with Oklahoma schoolchildren on art and history. “And we are who we are, and with our history, if you are bitter about it, you can't share it. You hold it inside and it doesn't do anything but tear you apart.”
So Bostick looks for the beauty in the stories, such as a legend that Africans once could fly but they forgot the magic words to do so.
His painting, he said represents the African history and he doesn’t want people to forget, to have trouble flying.
“Those of us who hold on to it are able to research it and in that sense, we fly,” he said. “That's why I don't think I'm bitter because … every time I have what I call the ‘a-ha’ moment and discover something new, I'm just thrilled and overjoyed.”
Symbols and images you can see in Bostick’s painting include both the uplifting parts of the black experience in America, such as depictions of accomplished people and heroes, and the symbols and words that represent darker parts of U.S. history – slavery and the struggle for equal rights.
In the painting look for these images:
A gold ropelike chord that traces the continent of Africa.
Images of military men to represent the African Americans who served in all branches of the U.S. military, including Dorie Miller, the first black American to receive the Navy Cross. Miller was a cook with no formal military training when he stepped in and manned anti-aircraft guns and tended to the wounded on an aircraft carrier during the attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II, Also depicted is a generic Tuskegee airman; the Tuskegee airmen were black pilots who fought in World War II. You can also see the U.S. Army’s Buffalo Soldiers, who fought for the North during the Civil War.
African adinkra symbols, including the sankofa (a bird or a heart), which translates roughly to “look to your past to understand your future.” A West African chief often carried a sankofa in his staff to remind him to do so. Another symbol in the painting is the Gye Name, which to Bostick means “I fear no one except God.”
A tree that was the scene of lynchings of black people in the United States, as depicted by a famous photograph. Emerging from the tree are chains clasped by a hand as well as images reminiscent of the whips that masters used on slaves. Also to note, the hand holding the chain is forming a fist was a prominent Black Power symbol in the 1960s but has its roots in ancient cultures, including Africa. The wrist is covered in a bracelet depicting some of the African symbols found throughout the painting.
Signs that once hung in places declaring “whites only” were welcome in certain public places, barring blacks.
The rows and rows of people on a slave ship coming to America from Africa.
A depiction of the “Door of No Return,” called a barracoon – As Bostick explained, this door leading from the barracks was the last door Africans walked through to board slave ships headed for America. In Ghana, he said, tourists now visit the barracoons to remember.
Quilt patterns that people would hang from their windows to tell escaping slaves they were on the right path for help from the Underground Railroad. Also, according to some folklore, those sympathetic to the cause would use braids in their hair as an undercover message system.
Depictions of famous African Americans, including Harriet Tubman, the famous American abolitionist and political activist who was born into slavery and later escaped, helping free others using the Underground Railroad before the Civil War; and Frederick Douglass, the 19th century human rights leader who was born into slavery in Maryland and became a social reformer, intellectual, writer, diplomat and abolitionist.
A nod to the Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas, which became a battleground in favor of school integration in 1957. The Little Rock Nine was a group of high-profile black students to integrate a formerly all-white school, three years after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that school segregation was unconstitutional. In Little Rock, the school was scheduled to integrate at the beginning of the 1957 school year, but protesters and the state’s National Guard kept segregation in place in direct opposition to the Supreme Court ruling. Weeks later, these students walked into the school under protection of 1,200 federal soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division in an iconic and key civil rights moment.
Cowrie shells and African trade beads, which were once used as currency in Africa.
Metal badges and trinkets that slaves wore. Bostick noted that slaves from Ghana who had been trained in blacksmithing probably created their own badges.
Sculpture-like heads representing Benin bronzes, which are sculptures from ancient Africa – the Kingdom of Benin, which is where Nigeria is today.
Masks from ancient Africa, painted with the subjects’ mouths’ open. Bostick said that when mouths are open in masks like these, they are imparting knowledge and wisdom, which is what he was trying to do in the painting.
“I tend to my past,” Bostick said. “The reason I did it is because I wanted to put down some intense moments of our African past. So that’s what the painting is – so I chose those images.”
Artist Al Bostick with his work “Tending to the Past,” which can be seen at NBC Oklahoma at NW 63 and Western Avenue in Oklahoma City.