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GRACE happily sings the blues
Washington, D.C. artist and muralist Rik Freeman, by all appearances, has an intensely busy and fertile mind. Cascading around his gray matter is a rich and passionate swarm of emotions, musings and experiences about racism and growing up black in America, especially in the segregated, Jim Crow South. Add to all that years of research on this complex and often painful subject.
Fortunately for the greater world, Freeman’s brilliant imagination and talents as an artist and storyteller have allowed him to share this powerful cerebral mix in a series of vivid and action-packed paintings, “The Chittlin Circuit Review: Narrative Paintings on the History of the Blues.”
To date, Freeman, 52, a native of Athens, Ga., has completed 22 paintings, begun in 1994. When complete, the indefatigable Freeman expects the series will number 25 to 40 paintings.
Now on view at the Greater Reston Arts Center (GRACE) through June 14, these museum-caliber works range from intimate portraits of bluesmen to dense, visually explosive scenes filled with crowds of memorable characters -- like “Mud Paw Willie.”
Digging down deep into his southern roots, Freeman’s paintings -- notable for their bold use of color and large scale -- follow an imaginary character, Mud Paw Willie, the quintessential bluesman, as he roams around the Chittlin Circuit.
The Chittlin Circuit, explains Joanne Bauer, GRACE’s exhibitions director, was a network of clubs and juke joints that grew up in the South when Jim Crow laws (enacted first in the 1880s) barred African Americans from white-only venues. The circuit developed as alternative places for African Americans to perform and enjoy music.
Freeman’s vibrant and totally engaging visual journey through the Chittlin Circuit also is a journey through the history of blues music and the turbulent social conditions of the time.
Though the circuit was a product of blatant racism, Freeman’s paintings also express “a strong vein of nostalgia,” writes Johanna Halford-MacLeod, executive director of the Franz and Virginia Bader Fund, which has helped fund the series, in the essay she wrote for the GRACE exhibition catalogue.
“The Chittlin Circuit Review is not just a history of the blues; it is an elegy for a lost community,” Halford-MacLeod writes.
Freeman describes himself as working in the tradition of political muralists like Diego Rivera, the controversial Mexican painter, and famed African-American artists John T. Biggers and Charles Wilbert White.
Following college and a stint in the U.S. Army, Freeman says he rejected the prevailing “push to be come an abstract painter.” He was moved instead by creating works with strong social and historical context --works that for him may be emotionally difficult but “touch a very personal space.”
But, says Freeman, he can only give viewers of his paintings a little bit of the story. The more context a person brings, the richer the experience.
For his own research, Freeman regards “The Land Where the Blues Began,” by famed folklorist and musicologist Alan Lomax, as his bible.
Freeman -- who has large-scale projects at prominent metropolitan Washington sites including the Arlington County Courthouse and the D.C. Convention Center -- adds that he is loving the GRACE experience. It has been so positive, he says, that he is spreading the word to other artists.
“GRACE treats you the way you should be treated,” he says.
The exhibition also offers a short video by Arlington filmmaker Andrea Tree documenting Freeman working in his D.C. studio.
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