TitleEast Texas Algebra
Artist
Melvin Edwards
(American, b. 1937)
Date1999-2007
MediumWelded Steel
DimensionsOverall: 16 x 11 x 8 in.
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, September 19, 2007
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number2007.8
Label TextMel Edwards was born in Houston, Texas and studied painting at the University of Southern California. In 1960 he turned his attention to sculpture and first gained recognition for his “Lynch Fragments” series in the early 1960s. His first solo exhibition was at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 1965 where he showed this group for the first time. In 1967 he moved to New York and three years later he had a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Edwards’s work weaves an intricate fabric of African, American, and African-American references by incorporating found objects in his work, which are often metaphors for confinement, restraint, and general oppression. "East Texas Algebra" was created over eight years as Mel worked and reworked the piece. Its title is a reference to the complex cultural dynamic of that region. Edwards has had additional solo exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, the Studio Museum, Harlem, and a major thirty-year retrospective organized by the Neuberger Museum. His work is found in the collections of LA County Museum of Art, the Wadsworth Athenaeum, and MoMA, among others.
