Enjoy a stimulating conversation about Bill Traylor’s continued importance, inspired by the new documentary film Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts. This panel discussion features artist Radcliffe Bailey, art historian Leslie King Hammond, Ph.D., writer Greg Tate, and director Jeffrey Wolf. The conversation is moderated by AFAM curator Valérie Rousseau, Ph.D.
Radcliffe Bailey is a painter, sculptor, and mixed media artist who utilizes the layering of imagery, culturally resonant materials and text to explore themes of ancestry, race, migration and collective memory. His work often incorporates found materials and objects from his past into textured compositions, including traditional African sculpture, tintypes of his family members, ships, train tracks and Georgia red clay. The cultural significance and rhythmic properties of music are also important influences that can be seen throughout his oeuvre.
Leslie King Hammond, Ph.D., is an art historian, curator, scholar, community art activist, and artist. She is Professor Emerita and Founding Director, Center for Race and Culture, Maryland Institute College of Art, serves on the Board of Directors of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture and a former President of the College Art Association.
Valérie Rousseau, Ph.D, is Senior Curator at the American Folk Art Museum. She curated the award-winning exhibition on performance art When the Curtain Never Comes Down (2015), as well as Art Brut in America: The Incursion of Jean Dubuffet (2015), PHOTO|BRUT: Collection Bruno Decharme & Compagnie (2021), and others presentations on artists Paa Joe (2019), William Van Genk (2014), and idiosyncratic visual narratives (2018). Among the publications she authored are the FILAF-winning Bill Traylor (5 Continents, 2018), “The Fate of Self-Taught Art” (The Brooklyn Rail, 2018), The Hidden Art (Rizzoli, 2017), and “Visionary Architectures” (Hayward Gallery, 2013).
Greg Tate is a writer, musician and cultural provocateur who lives on Harlem’s Sugar Hill. His books include Flyboy In The Buttermilk (1992), Everything But The Burden —What White People Are Taking From Black Culture (2004) and Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader (Duke University Press 2016) Tate has also led the Conducted Improv band Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber since 1999, and is a proud member of Howard University’s Bison Nation. He has been Visiting Faculty at Yale, Columbia, Brown, Williams, and, most recently, Princeton (where he taught ‘The Loud Black And Proud Musicology of Amiri Baraka’) and NYU where he debuted the course ‘’A Brief History of Woke Black Music ‘.
Jeffrey Wolf is a director and producer has made the acclaimed documentary, James Castle: Portrait of an Artist, an award-winning film that delves into the life and creative process of the artist James Castle, as told by family members, artists and members of the deaf community. Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts is Wolf’s second feature length documentary. He has also made short films about the following artists: James ‘Son Ford’ Thomas, Martin Ramirez, Elijah Pierce, and Gregory Van Maanen. As a feature film editor, Wolf is recognized for his film work with prominent directors such as Arthur Penn, Sidney Lumet, Leslye Headland, John Waters, and Ted Demme. Films include The Ref, Beautiful Girls, Holes, Life, among others.
