27 Facts About Camille Billops

Camille Josephine Billops was an African-American sculptor, filmmaker, archivist, printmaker, and educator.

Camille Billops's mother was a seamstress, and her father a cook.

Camille Billops traced the beginnings of her art to her parents' creativity in cooking and dressmaking.

Camille Billops graduated in 1960 from Los Angeles State College, where she majored in education for physically handicapped children.

Camille Billops's works are in the permanent collections of the Jersey City Museum and the Museum of Drawers, Bern, Switzerland.

Camille Billops exhibited in one-woman and group exhibitions worldwide, including Gallerie Akhenaton, Cairo, Egypt; Hamburg, Germany; Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Gimpel and Weitzenhoffer Gallery; and La Tertulia Museum, Cali, Colombia.

Camille Billops was a longtime friend and colleague of master printmaker Robert Blackburn, whom she assisted in establishing the first printmaking workshop in Asilah in 1978.

Camille Billops directed five more films, including Finding Christa in 1991, a highly autobiographical work that won the Grand Jury Prize for documentaries at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival.

Camille Billops produced all of her films with her husband and their film company, Mom and Pop Productions.

Camille Billops collaborated with photographer James Van Der Zee and poet, scholar, and playwright Owen Dodson on The Harlem Book of the Dead, which was published in 1978 with an introduction by Toni Morrison.

Camille Billops acted a play, America Hurrah, which portrays the status of America at that time with her husband James Hatch.

Camille Billops published a book, "The Art of Remembering", with Hatch.

In 1955, Camille Billops met Stanford, a lieutenant stationed at the Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo.

Camille Billops was everything I wanted that thing to be.

Camille Billops had been disinterested in motherhood, but Billops felt obligated to honor the traditional role of wife and mother at the time.

In 1959, Billops was introduced to James V Hatch, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles by her sister, Josie.

Camille Billops eventually insisted that Hatch leave his family to start a new life with her, which he eventually did in the early 1960s.

In 1960, Camille Billops made the decision to give her daughter, Christa, up for adoption, in order to throw herself fully into her art.

Camille Billops had refused to allow her family to take the child.

Camille Billops drove her daughter to the Los Angeles Children's Home Society of California, an orphanage.

Camille Billops asked Christa to go inside to the bathroom, and drove away.

Camille Billops and Hatch then went on to live their lives in New York City, where Hatch was a tenured professor of English at CCNY, a playwright, and a theater producer, and they were married in 1987.

When Christa was grown, Camille Billops allowed her into her life.

Camille Billops had refused a necessary operation and was found alone in her Bronx apartment.

Camille Billops had a style in her appearance that was unique.

Amena Meer's first sight of Camille Billops was her wearing an outfit that had beads clicking in her braids, feathers, a man's hat on, and black-rimmed eyes.

Camille Billops had a hairy upper lip and wore Afro-Asian necklaces.