Mark Bradford, Amendment #8, 2014, Mixed media on canvas. © 2014 Mark Bradford
Mark Bradford's hand is visible in his celebrated multi-layered collage paintings. These often riff on themes and signs he finds in the urban environment. On Monday, April 20, at 6pm in American Art's McEvoy Auditorium, the artist will be discussing his Amendment series in the third annual James Dicke Contemporary Artist Lecture. The Amendment series looks at the Bill of Rights in a progression of collage works whose words become increasingly illegible. The words blend into the abstracted work, losing their intent and meaning, the way they sometimes do in real life.
"The line of my making or my art practice goes back to my childhood, but it's not an art background, it's a making background," artist Mark Bradford told PBS's Art 21. Born in Los Angeles in 1961, Bradford worked in his mother's hair salon, in charge of making the signs that he would embellish with his calligraphic hand. "The hand was very early in my work—signage, text—I've always been a maker."
If you can't make the talk, you can watch live or later via our webcast.