DAVID C. DRISKELL CENTER ACQUIRES NEW ED LOVE SCULPTURE

The Driskell Center is proud to announce the addition of Jitterbug Waltzer by Ed Love to our permanent art collection.

The David C. Driskell Center is proud to announce the addition of Jitterbug Waltzer by Ed Love to our permanent art collection. The sculpture marks the first work by Ed Love to be acquired by the Driskell Center. Jitterbug Waltzer joins other recent acquisitions including a photograph by Gordon Parks, and a collection of sculptures by Bill Taylor.  

 

Ed Love (1936-1999) was a prolific sculptor and scholar. Though he created hundreds of sculptures over his career, he remains relatively unknown. Working predominantly with chrome and welded metal as primary materials, Love famously erected monumental constructions and stylized sculptural forms that have been compared to works by the late Romanian-French sculptor Constantin Brancusi, for their physics-defying structures and organic silhouettes. Love's particular aesthetic queried and explored Black identity through form and process. His work was inspired by mythic and mundane traditions across the African diaspora. An avid reader, Love was also deeply influenced by the improvisation of Black jazz musicians including Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Max Roach, and John Coltrane among others.

 

His work is in the permanent collections of The High Museum, Yale University Museum, University of the District of Columbia, Howard University, Goucher College, University of Massachusetts and numerous others, in addition to private collections worldwide.

 

More information about this sculpture as well as the rest of the art in our collection is viewable online at https://driskellcenter.pastperfectonline.com/.  The David C. Driskell Center is always adding new works to our collection to continue our mission of collecting, documenting and presenting African American art.

 

Brief Biography of Ed Love:

Education

California State University, BFA, 1966

California State University, MFA, 1967

University of Uppsala Sweden, Post Graduate Fellowship in Humanities and Fine Arts, 1967-68 

 

Teaching Career

Professor of Art and Director of Sculpture Program at Howard University, 1968-87

Founding Dean of New World School of the Arts’ Visual Arts Division, 7/1987 – 7/1990

Board of Advisors for National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, 10/1988-8/1990

Director of Undergraduate Studies at The Florida State University, 8/1990-05/1994

Professor of Art at The Florida State University, 8/1990 - 9/1999

 

Selected Awards and Honors

8/1986-7/1987 DC Commission on the Arts Individual Fellowship 

1987 District of Columbia Awards in the Arts

9/1987-8/1988 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship

1990 Pratt Institute Educator Recognition Award 

1990-99 Florida State University Teaching Awards

1991 U.S. Department of Education Certificate of Appreciation

1991 California State University Distinguished Alumni Award 

 

Selected Exhibitions

W.E.B. DuBois Gallery, Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts,

Amherst, Massachusetts, November 1972 (Sculpture and Drawings)

Washington Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., February 1972 (Sculpture)

D.C. Black Repertory Theatre, March-April 1973 (Sculpture)

The Corcoran Gallery of Arts, Washington, D.C., September-October 1975 (Sculpture)

Washington Project for the Arts; Washington, D.C., February 1976 Convergence (Sculpture and Drawings)

 

~This Announcement was written in collaboration with Eileen Berger, Owner of Just Lookin’ Gallery~