While taking a stroll through downtown Fort Worth, make a stop at Sundance Square’s gallery, Caravan of Dreams. Right now, the gallery is showcasing “Flowers in the Concrete: Recent Works by Sedrick Huckaby” through August 2.
This is the first time the gallery has showcased Huckaby’s work, which includes textured paintings, drawings and sculptures. Each work explores the themes of Black life, memory, spirituality and resilience.
Fort Worth resident Huckaby is the founder of a collaborative project space in Fort Worth called Kinfolk House. Huckaby earned his BFA from Boston University and his MFA from Yale University, and has been an artist for close to 30 years.
The media he uses for his art include charcoal, pencil, colored pencils, pastels and, more recently, papier-mâché. The “Flowers in the Concrete” exhibition is a compilation of Huckaby’s previous works that represent his community, family and people that he knows.
In one corner of the gallery are acrylic portraits that Huckaby created through his Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award in Mexico; the works are titled “Nacimiento Portrait Series.” The portraits and oral histories are those of members of the Mascogos community in Nacimiento, Coahuila, in
northern Mexico. The Mascogos are descendants of Afro-Seminoles and have celebrated Juneteenth since the 1870s.
In the center of the gallery is a large table with a life-sized papier-mâché sculpture of Huckaby’s grandmother. On the table, there are salt shakers, bowls and a pitcher covered in articles about Opal Lee, Juneteenth and gun control in Texas. Behind the sculpture are four drawings depicting loved ones gathered.
“The piece is about the table and what happens over a gathering with food,” Huckaby said. “It’s about taking that ordinary moment where people get together and how that moment becomes all of the things that entangle us in life.”
In the corner of the gallery right where visitors walk in, is the Black Bird Redemption Song. This work is composed of different black birds trapped in cages too small for them. The bottoms of the cages are blue, yellow and pink. The work reflects on the impact of mass incarceration on Black communities in America.
Continues through August 2, the gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from noon until 8 p.m. at Caravan of Dreams Gallery, 501
Houston St., Fort Worth, in Sundance Square. Free. sundancesquare.com.