Past
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Martha Jackson-Jarvis: Abstracted Lands and Lineage
by Hannah Sirlin 23 Apr 2025 Martha Jackson-Jarvis is an esteemed multimedia artist. Born in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1952, she developed an early appreciation for the significance of place and space. Growing up in the South, Jackson-Jarvis often speaks fondly of her freedom to explore the forests from a young age. During this time, she began to understand that she was not alone in the world; nature and her surroundings carried an energy. Read more -
Tokie Rome-Taylor: Capturing Heritage and Legacy
by Hannah Sirlin 17 Jan 2025 Tokie Rome-Taylor is an interdisciplinary photo-based artist who explores themes of time, spirituality, and identity. Her practice investigates the cultural, spiritual, and familial histories of African Americans in the South, reflecting both what has been remembered and what has been lost over time. Recently, PFF had the pleasure of sitting down with the artist to ask some questions about her works and her process. Read more -
Black Majesty: The Uplifting Art of Otto Neals
by Claudia Volpe 18 Apr 2022 Last year, Susan Stedman guest-curated a spectacular exhibition for the Art Students League of New York, titled, Creating Community. Cinque Gallery Artists. The exhibition surveyed the work of 39 selected artists who participated in the collaborative enterprise during its 35-year run. It was there that we first encountered Otto Neals’ remarkable sculptures, and we are delighted to share that PFF has acquired three of his pieces since then! Read more
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Symbolism in the Art of Frederick D. Jones
by Claudia Volpe 12 Jan 2022 Frederick D. Jones was born in 1913 in Raleigh, North Carolina, and spent the majority of his early childhood in Georgetown, South Carolina. After relocating with his family to Atlanta, Georgia, Jones studied under renowned artist Hale Woodruff. Read more -
Feeding the Veins of the Earth (Grounded Angel)
by Imo Nse Imeh 7 Sep 2021 The global pandemic of 2020 brought with it a unique set of circumstances that have altered the way we see the world around us. Nobody knew that our bustling world could grind to halt; none of us believed that the Earth could standstill. And so, in the face of such impossibilities becoming our new reality, we all waded into the troubling and dark waters of discovery, death, anxiety, loneliness, and so much loss. Read more -
Ralph Chessé: Self-Taught Artist and Puppeteer
by Ellary Jenkins 10 Aug 2021 Among our many goals in building the PFF Collection is ensuring that we elevate under-represented artists as much as we do emerging talents and “the greats.” Ralph Chessé is likely one of those marvelous artists that you didn’t catch wind of. Allow us to fix that. Read more
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Collection Spotlight: Chawne Kimber
by Claudia Volpe 26 Jul 2021 Dr. Chawne Kimber is a mathematician, wordsmith, and quilter who we’ve been fortunate to get to know during her tenure as head of the mathematics department at Lafayette College. Read more -
The Meticulous Improvisational Art of Carl Richard “Dingbat” Smith
by Claudia Volpe 26 Jan 2021 “Bat,” as his friends (one of whom is PFF artist, Thaddeus Mosley) called him, lived and worked in Pittsburgh, PA. Little is known about him today, though his intricate relief work using only nails of different sizes and colors to create fluid, improvised (!) compositions deserves much wider recognition. Read more -
The Fluid Imagination of Alvin Booth
by Berrisford Boothe 17 Nov 2020 Not all artists in the PFF Collection are “superstars,” but all possess certain qualities in their work that attracts our attention. They all speak from an internal spark of passion. Many are driven to invent their own aesthetic languages of form. Others cleverly extrapolate on existing languages to invent new visual inflections, etc. The voice of every PFF artist adds a significant wavelength to the narrative spectrum of African-American, Afro-Caribbean and Afro global Western presence. Read more
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Mavis Pusey: Expanding the Definition of Black Art
by Claudia Volpe 8 May 2020 Mavis Pusey was an African American artist born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1928. She grew up in the rural town of Retreat where she learned to sew at a very young age and by 9 years old, knew how to design and make her own clothes. Read more -
Artist Spotlight: Arvie Smith
by Berrisford Boothe 1 Aug 2017 PFF featured artist Arvie Smith was born in 1938 in the Jim Crow South where he lived with his grandparents and great-grandmother, a former slave. As a teen, he moved... Read more
