Keeping it Real – The Art of Willie Birch

By Renae Friedley, BLACK ART IN AMERICA

I first interviewed Willie Birch in December 1996 for an article that appeared in the January/February 1997 issue of theGulf Coast Arts & Entertainment Review for the opening of an exhibit at the Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans. Birch, a very talented and outspoken artist, frequently appeared among the pages of the GCA&E throughout the years that I published the magazine. In the January/February 2004 issue, he was featured as part of an article on the opening of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in August 2003. The opening exhibit at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art was entitled “The Story of the South: Art and Culture, 1890-2003” and included works by such noted artists as Elemore Morgan, Jeffrey Cook, Howard Finster, Eudora Welty, Benny Andrews, and Willie Birch.

During Hurricane Katrina, Birch evacuated to New York. Fortunately, some friends took his work from the studio on Villere Street in the 7th Ward to Dallas, so everything was saved. He came back after Katrina when he was asked to attend a meeting at Tulane to discuss using the culture of New Orleans as a means of transforming the city. The Porch 7thWard Cultural Organization grew out of those meetings. The Porch is a cultural organization committed to the Seventh Ward area in New Orleans. It has organized arts workshops, theatre groups, and an arts festival.

In 2005, his work was featured in a book entitled Celebrating Freedom: The Art of Willie Birch. It was published in conjunction with the traveling exhibition Celebrating Freedom: The Art of Willie Birch, which was organized by the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans. It is a beautiful table-top book that includes eighteen renditions of the people of New Orleans such as Mardi Gras krewes and parades; Martin Luther King Day festivities; family celebrations; Sunday rituals; baptisms; and jazz funerals and highlights the talents of this outstanding artist.

Birch is the featured artist at the Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans in an exhibit entitled Willie Birch: Looking Back—1978-2003, which opens October 2 and runs through October 30, 2010. The exhibit brings together a series of paintings and sculptures dating from 1978 to 2003 that focus on both the celebratory nature of the people of New Orleans as well as stories of their everyday life. He is also one of the artists included in an exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York entitled Global Africa Project, which opens November 17, 2010 and continues until May 15, 2011. The exhibit features the work of over 100 artists working in Africa, Europe, Asia, the United States, and the Caribbean. He is also part of an exhibit that opens at the White Columns Gallery in New York in January 2011. The work of Willie Birch can also be found in museum collections as well as public and private collections across the country, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Birch returned to New Orleans after Katrina, and his studio on Villere Street, because he says, “I live here.” It is part of what makes Birch who he is. “New Orleans has its own way of expressing itself. New Orleans is about feeling. Through that feeling you capture the feeling of what is in the culture,” he says.

His latest works focus more on the vegetation of New Orleans, which is a break from his previous work that features people as they go about their daily routines. “My backyard has become this playground. The light is so unusual in this city, and you add the clouds. Louisiana is so beautiful, and yet you can forget that if you are here because of all of the other problems,” he adds.

Following are the articles as they appeared in the Gulf Coast Arts and Entertainment Review.

January/February 1997

After nearly two decades in the North, Willie Birch returned home to New Orleans. Since his return over two years ago, Birch has been working on a body of work that reflects the people of the South and their customs. This work has been shown at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in North Carolina, the Luise Ross Gallery in New York, and last May at the Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans in an exhibit entitled “In Search of Heroes, Part II.”

“This is about New Orleans. It’s about the blues, it’s about roots, and …coming out of the art of the Congo. Southern tradition like storytelling…symbolism…the idea here is metaphor,” says Birch.

This body of work springs forth from a well that is deep within his soul. Birth decided to move back to New Orleans when he realized that the “type of imaginary I began to deal with in New York was more reflective of what my experience was of growing up in New Orleans and that’s when I decided to try and get somebody to give me some money to do a body of work dealing with growing up here [New Orleans] and after four tires, I got the Guggenheim.

With the money from the Guggenheim Fellowship, Birch created a memory series. “I came back to New Orleans specifically to do pieces which were based on my childhood memories of growing up here.” That body of work was shown at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in North Carolina in 1995.

The next body of work was entitled “In Search of Heroes, Part I, which appeared at the Luise Ross Gallery in New York in November and December 1996. This exhibit of sculptures was full of the talismans and symbolism of a return to roots. Most of the pieces were covered with an appliqué of shells, feathers, bones, and bits of broken glass and mirror, much of which was dug out of the artist’s backyard at the home he is renovating in New Orleans.

I first interviewed Willie Birch in December 1996 for an article that appeared in the January/February 1997 issue of theGulf Coast Arts & Entertainment Review for the opening of an exhibit at the Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans. Birch, a very talented and outspoken artist, frequently appeared among the pages of the GCA&E throughout the years that I published the magazine. In the January/February 2004 issue, he was featured as part of an article on the opening of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in August 2003. The opening exhibit at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art was entitled “The Story of the South: Art and Culture, 1890-2003” and included works by such noted artists as Elemore Morgan, Jeffrey Cook, Howard Finster, Eudora Welty, Benny Andrews, and Willie Birch.

During Hurricane Katrina, Birch evacuated to New York. Fortunately, some friends took his work from the studio on Villere Street in the 7th Ward to Dallas, so everything was saved. He came back after Katrina when he was asked to attend a meeting at Tulane to discuss using the culture of New Orleans as a means of transforming the city. The Porch 7thWard Cultural Organization grew out of those meetings. The Porch is a cultural organization committed to the Seventh Ward area in New Orleans. It has organized arts workshops, theatre groups, and an arts festival.

In 2005, his work was featured in a book entitled Celebrating Freedom: The Art of Willie Birch. It was published in conjunction with the traveling exhibition Celebrating Freedom: The Art of Willie Birch, which was organized by the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans. Itis a beautiful table-top book that includes eighteen renditions of the people of New Orleans such as Mardi Gras krewes and parades; Martin Luther King Day festivities; family celebrations; Sunday rituals; baptisms; and jazz funerals and highlights the talents of this outstanding artist.

Birch is the featured artist at the Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans in an exhibit entitled Willie Birch: Looking Back—1978-2003, which opens October 2 and runs through October 30, 2010. The exhibit brings together a series of paintings and sculptures dating from 1978 to 2003 that focus on both the celebratory nature of the people of New Orleans as well as stories of their everyday life. He is also one of the artists included in an exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York entitled Global Africa Project, which opens November 17, 2010 and continues until May 15, 2011. The exhibit features the work of over 100 artists working in Africa, Europe, Asia, the United States, and the Caribbean. He is also part of an exhibit that opens at the White Columns Gallery in New York in January 2011. The work of Willie Birch can also be found in museum collections as well as public and private collections across the country, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Birch returned to New Orleans after Katrina, and his studio on Villere Street, because he says, “I live here.” It is part of what makes Birch who he is. “New Orleans has its own way of expressing itself. New Orleans is about feeling. Through that feeling you capture the feeling of what is in the culture,” he says.

His latest works focus more on the vegetation of New Orleans, which is a break from his previous work that features people as they go about their daily routines. “My backyard has become this playground. The light is so unusual in this city, and you add the clouds. Louisiana is so beautiful, and yet you can forget that if you are here because of all of the other problems,” he adds.

Following are the articles as they appeared in the Gulf Coast Arts and Entertainment Review.

January/February 1997

After nearly two decades in the North, Willie Birch returned home to New Orleans. Since his return over two years ago, Birch has been working on a body of work that reflects the people of the South and their customs. This work has been shown at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in North Carolina, the Luise Ross Gallery in New York, and last May at the Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans in an exhibit entitled “In Search of Heroes, Part II.”

“This is about New Orleans. It’s about the blues, it’s about roots, and …coming out of the art of the Congo. Southern tradition like storytelling…symbolism…the idea here is metaphor,” says Birch.

This body of work springs forth from a well that is deep within his soul. Birth decided to move back to New Orleans when he realized that the “type of imaginary I began to deal with in New York was more reflective of what my experience was of growing up in New Orleans and that’s when I decided to try and get somebody to give me some money to do a body of work dealing with growing up here [New Orleans] and after four tires, I got the Guggenheim.

With the money from the Guggenheim Fellowship, Birch created a memory series. “I came back to New Orleans specifically to do pieces which were based on my childhood memories of growing up here.” That body of work was shown at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in North Carolina in 1995.

The next body of work was entitled “In Search of Heroes, Part I, which appeared at the Luise Ross Gallery in New York in November and December 1996. This exhibit of sculptures was full of the talismans and symbolism of a return to roots. Most of the pieces were covered with an appliqué of shells, feathers, bones, and bits of broken glass and mirror, much of which was dug out of the artist’s backyard at the home he is renovating in New Orleans.