Artists | Letitia and Sedrick Huckaby
Letitia and Sedrick Huckaby (of Huckaby Studios) are an artist team that represents images of Black families, communities, and culture in Fort Worth.
Letitia’s work is included in several prestigious collections: the Library of Congress, the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia, and the Samella Lewis Contemporary Art Collection at Scripps College in Claremont, California. She has also created public art projects around the DFW metroplex including the 4th Street Trailhead at Trinity River in Fort Worth, the Ella Mae Shamblee Branch Library in Fort Worth, and the Highland Hills Branch Library in Dallas.
Sedrick’s formal education in art started at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. He then transferred to Boston University (BFA, 1997), where he received extensive academic training in studio art. Huckaby has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including a Guggenheim award, and Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, and a Lewis Comfort Tiffany Award. For graduate studies, he went to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut (MFA, 1999). Most recently, he was named the Texas State Artist for 2018. His works are in many collections across the country and at the American Embassy in Namibia.
In Dawn Chorus, artist Letitia Huckaby features the collective voice of female artists and girls of color in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. The work focuses on the political ethos and gender issues in our world today, and was created in response to a push by ornithologists to record female bird songs. Letitia Huckaby’s installation in New Stories, New Futures draws attention to the cultural tendency to ignore or downplay the voices of women and young girls of various ethnic backgrounds, while encouraging viewers to take notice and listen.
In his video projection piece, Contemplating Fred Rouse, the artist Sedrick Huckaby contemplates the 1921 lynching of Fort Worth native Fred Rouse. Since there were no images of Mr. Rouse, the piece does not attempt to recreate his appearance. Instead, the recorded drawings depict various ages of black men, starting with an older man and ending with a teenager. Like so many other cases, the artist reminds us that Fred’s brutal murder could have been any person of color, even the artist’s very own son.
