17 Facts About Jae Jarrell

Elaine "Jae" Jarrell was born on Elaine Annette Johnson in 1935 and is an American artist known for her fashion designs and involvement with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and co-founder of AfriCOBRA, an artist collective organization.

Jae Jarrell was influenced by the success of her uncle's haberdashery shop, where he sold fabric and sewing tools.

Jae Jarrell attended Bowling Green State University in northwest Ohio before moving to Chicago to attend School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Jae Jarrell attended SAIC during the 1950s and 1960s at the same time as Wadsworth Jarrell, who would become her husband.

Much of Jae Jarrell's art was created as a member of AfriCOBRA, the African American artist collective that sought to invoke the styles of African art while making a strong call for revolution.

When creating art for AfriCOBRA, Jae Jarrell made her unique garments, using the body as a vessel for revolution and identity.

Jae Jarrell's pieces reflect the goal of the group, which was to create an African American aesthetic that celebrated black power and a sense of community.

Jae Jarrell accomplishes this by crafting her suit to be like a poster which takes form as a dashiki, a traditional West African men's dress.

Jae Jarrell's Urban Wall Suit is a piece inspired by graffiti and concert posters that filled the streets and African American neighborhoods in Chicago.

Jae Jarrell incorporated AfriCOBRA's desire to emphasize images with language by making the suit a symbol of the message boards of the community.

Jae Jarrell used small pieces and scraps from her store to make the patchwork resembling bricks, adding velvet ribbon as the mortar.

Jae Jarrell then incorporated the graffiti and poster elements that resembled the message boards.

In more recent years, Jae Jarrell has shifted her focus from design to sculpting and constructing furniture.

Jae Jarrell continues emphasizing African art and culture in Shields and Candelabra Vest by making the piece from cactus plants turned over to make frames for vibrant African shields.

Jae Jarrell's work has appeared in several major exhibitions, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art's 2014 exhibition Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties and the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland's 2015 exhibition How to Remain Human.

Jae Jarrell's work was featured in the 2015 exhibit The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

Jae Jarrell's garments belong to private collections as well as to a permanent collection in the Brooklyn Museum of Art.