BEYE Discovery: Mark Bradford: Celebrating Black History (in the making!)

Post & Lesson Contributed by Ally Bernstein, Teacher Assistant

Mark Bradford is a well-known contemporary artist from Los Angeles, whose work is relevant to race, class, and site. First, we presented a video of Bradford playing basketball in a Lakers “uniform” that was redesigned to mimic the skirt of an antebellum gown. This enormous skirt made him trip and fall while he tried to shoot baskets, but he always made the shot. His video, which concerned obstacles, success, gender, race, and history, was a great segue into the part of his work that inspired our project for today.

Beye Discovery Student Artwork

Much of Mark Bradford’s work involves layering. He layers, for example, end papers used for bleaching hair, a reference to time spent in his mother’s salon as a child. He also layers signs that he finds, which tell about the neighborhoods that he explores in Los Angeles. Through layering and removing (sometimes with a heavy duty sander), he is able to create beautiful works that sparkle and suggest that the past is part of the present.

Joey

We used cardboard and magazine pages to mirror Bradford’s working process, as he often makes use of found materials. Students used watered down glue and carefully layered texts and images from these magazines. When the pieces were dry, students then removed some layers, allowing the buried images to resurface.

The result of the process was resplendent, with rough-hewn surfaces full of depth, color, and texture.