Black Lives Matter Artist Grant Exhibition
Artist Profile | Willie Little
About the Artist:
Willie Little is a Black multimedia artist and author. His visual narratives document a fading part of rural Southern life while also tackling topics of racism and Black Lives Matter, Social Justice, and the childhood memories of growing up on a tobacco farm in Eastern North Carolina. His memoir, In the Sticks, documents his years growing up as a poor, Black, and gay child in the rural south. He currently resides in the San Francisco Bay area and Portland, Oregon.
Little is an artist whose genius incorporates sculpture, painting, sound installations, re-constructed architecture, re-cycled memorabilia, and real-life stories. Little pours out his soul for all to see as he relives growing up during a time of radical change. The common thread in all the work he creates is his examination of the manifestations of physical and societal decay in American culture.
Little received his BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His solo exhibits include the Smithsonian Institution, The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, the American Jazz Museum, the Froelick Gallery in Portland, Oregon, and the Noel Gallery. He is a recent recipient of the Oregon Community Foundations Creative Heights Grant to create a site-specific solo exhibition at Oregon Contemporary in 2022. Notable group exhibitions include the Corcoran and the California Folk Art Museum. He also participated in The Hourglass Project: Baggage, an internationally renowned residency and exhibition program, which toured venues throughout South Africa, Belgium, and Mozambique; the work is archived in a catalog published by Caversham Press (South Africa).
WEBSITE: http://www.willielittle.com
INSTAGRAM: @willielittleart1234
YOUTUBE: channel/UCZjpW0EG7K1v70ATiMKuPSA