Joe Wesley Overstreet was an African-American painter from Mississippi who lived and worked in New York City for most of his career.
35 Facts About Joe Overstreet
1.
2.
Joe Overstreet worked with Amiri Baraka as the Art Director for the Black Arts Repertory Theatre and School in Harlem, New York.
3.
Joe Overstreet was born on June 20,1933, in Conehatta, Mississippi.
4.
Joe Overstreet's father was a mason, whose work exposed him to construction and architecture which was later to influence his three dimensional paintings.
5.
Joe Overstreet's hometown is located in central, rural Mississippi, one of several communities that in 1945 was included in a reservation for the federally recognized Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, who made up the majority of the population.
6.
Joe Overstreet's family was nomadic, moving five times between 1941 and 1946 before settling in Berkeley, CA.
7.
In 1951, Joe Overstreet graduated from Oakland Technical High School in Oakland, California, and worked part time for the Merchant Marines.
8.
That same year, Joe Overstreet began studying art, first at Contra Costa College and then at the California School of Fine Arts.
9.
Joe Overstreet studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1954.
10.
From 1955 to 1957, Joe Overstreet was part of a community of Black artists in Lost Angeles and worked as an animator for Walt Disney Studios.
11.
Joe Overstreet published a journal titled Beatitudes Magazine from his studio, and was part of a collective of African-American artists.
12.
In 1958, Joe Overstreet moved to New York City with his friend, Beat poet Bob Kaufman.
13.
Joe Overstreet designed displays for store windows to earn a living, and lived and had his studio on 85th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues.
14.
Joe Overstreet got to know many of the Abstract Expressionist painters from hanging out at Cedar Tavern and felt his real art education came through his relationships with established artists, such as Romare Bearden, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Larry Rivers, Hale A Woodruff, and Hans Hofmann.
15.
Joe Overstreet identified with de Kooning's use of house painter's brushes.
16.
Joe Overstreet began to feel comfortable using cement trowels to apply his paints, in such works as Big Black.
17.
In 1962 Joe Overstreet moved downtown and set up his studio at 76 Jefferson Street, in a loft building where jazz musician Eric Dolphy lived.
18.
From 1970 to 1973 they moved to the East Bay Area where Joe Overstreet taught at the University of California at Hayward.
19.
Joe Overstreet's painting The New Jemima subverts the stereotypical black image of Aunt Jemima.
20.
Unlike the original character, a domestic servant who exists to please others, Joe Overstreet's Jemima wields a machine gun.
21.
In 1964, Joe Overstreet stopped working with oil and began painting in acrylic, which dries faster.
22.
In 1963 Joe Overstreet met Ishmael Reed, the poet, writer, and political activist, just as Reed was formulating his Hoodoo aesthetic as a literary method.
23.
Joe Overstreet has been explicit about the socio-political content and sources of his work, but he discusses the ropes and geometry of his paintings in terms of his desire to open up and change space.
24.
Joe Overstreet has cited the book by Jay Hambidge, The Elements of Dynamic Symmetry, as a major influence.
25.
Joe Overstreet recalls his father being interested in the Egyptian rope stretchers, and how masons used rope lines to determine the perspective, pitch and level of the earth.
26.
Joe Overstreet noted his interest in breaking away from western painting, from use of the rectangle and stretcher, and from western art history sources.
27.
Joe Overstreet's sources included the art of North Africa, Islamic mosques, and Mali, and Native American art.
28.
Joe Overstreet used wooden dowels shaped with a jigsaw and hand tools to make intricate stretchers, painting figures in patterns drawn from Aztec, Benin, and Egyptian cultures.
29.
Joe Overstreet's best known work are his shaped paintings from the 1970s.
30.
Joe Overstreet studied nomadic cultures and the idea of a double or foreign identity.
31.
Joe Overstreet was interested in tantric yoga, as well as Navajo rituals of sand painting.
32.
Joe Overstreet suspends tarps from ropes in flexible, three-dimensional installations.
33.
For decades, Joe Overstreet has experimented with both the spatial and textural possibilities of painting, and complex cultural histories.
34.
Joe Overstreet created his semi-figurative Storyville series, which recalls the New Orleans jazz scene and neighborhood of the early 1900s.
35.
The Estate of Joe Overstreet is represented by Eric Firestone Gallery.