Sharecropper
I see age, strength, and a life of labor. I feel pain. There is no one else in the print and I feel pain. I think it comes through her eyes, weary yet surviving. Her gaze is set off into the distance, focused and exhausted. She seems prepared yet cautious. The etches on her dark skin remind me of the treads in tree bark. Her robe, held together by a paperclip, and her hat are in a field of the past. I assume she’s not from twenty first century America, but how far away is this reality for someone? I could attribute this woman to being a worker in the banana plantations of Ecuador or the sugar cane fields in Brazil.
An Artist I Never Knew
To find Elizabeth Catlett’s Sharecropper, I had to search for “famous black women artists.” I came across an article on a famous black female artist I should know. I am disappointed and not surprised that I had never heard of her. She was an incredible person and artist. Catlett was born in 1915. She lived in a time very close to ours, but life was different in a lot of ways. Her Black Mexican heritage made it difficult for her to succeed in art. I always think that industries like entertainment, music, and art would be the most inclusive places, but they never were and there’s still progress to make. Despite her race, “she became the first Black woman to earn a degree from the University of Iowa, but was not allowed to live on campus because of her race” (Montoya). She continued to make art that highlighted the struggle of black women. Catlett was such a prominent activist in the world that U.S. McCarthyism proponents were scared of her.
Her citizenship was reinstated in 2002, but she lived happily in Mexico until her death in 2012. Catlett lived an amazing life full of successes, yet even with her death, I had never heard her name. Perhaps she was an unsuitable role model for textbooks because her citizenship was revoked. Nevertheless, her art survives her and constantly holds space for black women.Because many members of the TGP and her husband were Communists and because of the nature of her work and activism, the U.S. State Department declared her an undesirable alien and her U.S. citizenship was revoked, forcing her to become a Mexican citizen (she was already a resident). (Montoya)