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MILTON BOWENS
Activist and Storyteller

“To reflect is to disturb one's thoughts”
--Jean Rostand, philosopher

“If a tree falls in the forest do you hear it, if I pass my daddy on the street will I know it?”
--Milton Bowens

If we agree with Rostand’s assertion, then how does it relate to the artist’s role in society and the impact of art on society? The discussion is as old as art history itself.  Should an artist’s work provoke thought, should it stimulate emotion, or should it simply impact upon one’s visual perceptions?

It is evident that Milton Bowens strives to do all three.  Juxtaposing images, texts and colors in a bold, uncompromising style, he chronicles the history and experiences of Black America in expansive series of work.  A self-avowed activist, he is clearly capable of disturbing as he deals with weighty historical issues such as slavery, racism and social injustice in a way that is honest to the core.

Bowens does not gloss over nor ignore our problems, but forces us to confront them.  He tackles contemporary themes like the numbing effects of pop culture and the destructive values facing a new generation of African Americans, often holding a mirror to the Black community.  When, for instance, he writes in a line of text from an earlier work, “Daddy, how come the men on the corner have brown bags over their sodas?”, he enters the hyper-sensitive domain of private Black discourse - a minefield, as Bill Cosby recently discovered. In fact though, Bowens is closer to that hipper and younger cultural critic, Chris Rock.  His mordant wit, sharp intellect, and heavy servings of irony and satire move his art well beyond any narrow categories of activist art, political art, or pure social commentary.

As much as Bowens engages history and politics, he also embodies the idea that art is about storytelling.  And there are powerfully inspirational stories to tell, with no shortage of heroes to celebrate. He consistently places the idea and ideals of home, family, and cultural pride at the center of his work, and stoutly celebrates kinship, love and the vernacular of our ancestors. A viewer need only look at the references in “Stitches in Time” to see that underscoring his work is a commitment to justice and optimism for the future.  His art has always been willing to acknowledge the complexity of American history and culture and Bowens settles the question of whether an artist can generate positive energy and righteous anger at the same time.

Any work of art is understood as the result of a series of aesthetic choices: particular symbols, colors, patterns and brushstrokes that come together on the canvas. It is the product of those choices that gives the work its meaning, its power to affect people’s minds.  Or as Oscar Wilde observed, “all of art is at once surface and symbol”. And symbolism is not lost on Bowens. He is remarkably adept at mining the emotional power of symbols. Using images of milk cartons, liquor bottles and even a butcher’s outline of a pig, he forcefully brings to light prejudice, racism and injustice, while at the same time projecting the pride, ambivalence and contradictions of the Black community and America at large.

In the current series, Bowens continues to demonstrate his skillful handling of various mediums and a careful construction and organization of the material – the result of his formal training that began as early as junior high school.  A consummately thoughtful artist, Bowens has developed the practice of ‘journaling’ his series beforehand, much the same way as a novelist would outline the structure and plot of a novel. His work consists of enigmatic combinations of words, symbols, images and colors executed with pleasing simplicity. His love of jazz and hip-hop clearly influences his work and his musical heroes are often his muse. In his pieces he
repeats, combines and overlaps the various elements to create different tempos and even the unexpected visual syncopation that convey a sense of jazz improvisation.

In choosing the visual trope of quilting around which to construct the series in this exhibition, Bowens finds a fitting vehicle for his grand narrative. The act and art, of quilting is bringing unity to a set of disparate pieces. For Bowens it offers a metaphor that connects the past to the present while demonstrating how integral the African American experience is to the patchwork of American culture.

With it he also expands the frame, finding kinship with other folk traditions that use quilting to tell stories, or to make political statements. Two modern-era instances that come to mind are the AIDS Quilt Project and the Arpelleristas of Chile, a community of women who used their tapestries to attract attention to the human rights abuses of the Pinochet dictatorship in the 80’s.

With this series Bowens has created an art that connects us to ourselves, to our history and to each other.


Byrma Braham

Gallery Director

MILTON BOWENS
Another Look

With paint, collage and hand-written text, Milton Bowens creates billboards about the African American experience.

Billboards distill complex messages and issues into images that can be quickly consumed and understood—by a wide range of the population. Tellingly, Bowens says that he creates for the most impressionable in our community. “I paint primarily for those young, Black children who may encounter my work and see that someone understands their story,” he said in a recent interview.

One paradox of Bowens’ work is that while he paints with a younger generation in mind, the stories, messages, issues and images he loves are often rooted in an older generation of African-Americans. Even if these elders, with roots in the South, have migrated to points North and West, they retain and pass on much of the same language, culture and flavor of church, juke joints, soul food, family and neighborhood happenings.

Bowens’ ‘billboards’ reveal his obvious exposure to this root of African American culture while growing up in Oakland, CA. as one of 10 siblings.  In his exhibit, “Stitches in Time,” he combined images of handmade quilts and doilies, with lessons in history, culture and folk wisdom. “Once Upon A time When We Were Colored” includes these words:

Now Don’t Go Hanging
Your Head Ain’t No
Answers for Ole Life’s
Troubles on the Tops
Of Your Shoes.

Using simple motifs that are often repeated, such as a rooster, Bowens applies his techniques to subjects and figures in Black history, including the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II, boxer Joe Louis, soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry of the Civil War or jazz great Duke Ellington.

Born in 1967, Bowens is solidly a part of the hip-hop generation and his work contradicts any notion of a generation gap that doesn’t allow him to embrace all that has come before him, as a part of who he is and what he creates.  A series of paintings that could easily be imagined as artistic album covers, pay tribute to the likes of Curtis Mayfield and B.B. King. While he does recognize the impact of artists such as L.L. Cool J and Slick Rick, he is more likely to honor blues and jazz icons, including Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Charlie Parker.

He seamlessly creates a bridge to the present with paintings that ridicule the hip hop-industrial-complex for promoting a culture that he gleefully compares to minstrelsy and stereotypes such as Aunt Jemima.  He has at least four paintings featuring mock covers of The Source and VIBE magazines. In “The Source, No. 2”, an Al Jolson look-alike is dressed in a hideous green suit, while the cover promotes as its lead story: “Shuffle and Flow: It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp,” an obvious reference to the controversial movie, and (Oscar-winning) soundtrack for, “Hustle and Flow,” about a down-and-out Memphis pimp.

Bowens moves fluidly from the experiences of older adults, to those of his peers, to those of children—the ice cream man, penny candy, big pickles sold individually at the corner store, and the cash needed for a new “X-Men” comic book. In his series, “What Becomes of a Broken Soul: Letters from the New Plantation”, he compares the U.S. prison system to slavery and takes the persona of an inmate in a series of first-person letters. He quick-comments on topics as diverse as the legacy of the Black Panthers, the plight of the Black family and the need for prayer.

There is a continuous and exhausting thread of exploration—of history, culture and emotional life—in the images and words of Bowens. He writes:

Eye am Searching For a Painting
That Says Everything So That Eye
Don’t Have To Paint Anymore.


Esther Iverem

Esther Iverem is a journalist and author whose most recent book is “We Gotta Have It, Twenty Years of Seeing Black at the Movies, 1986-2006”. A former staff writer for The Washington Post and New York Newsday, she is founder of SeeingBlack.com, an award-winning Web site for Black critical voices on arts, media and politics.

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