{"id":7573,"date":"2026-07-02T07:54:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T07:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/?p=7573"},"modified":"2026-07-02T07:54:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T07:54:16","slug":"a-different-way-of-looking-the-art-and-legacy-of-mildred-howard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/?p=7573","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A Different Way of Looking\u2019 \u2014 The Art and Legacy of Mildred Howard"},"content":{"rendered":"

By<\/span>Teresa Moore<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been ten years since the U.S. Treasury secretary announced that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. While it appears unlikely that\u00a0Brigadier General<\/a>\u00a0Tubman will grace our pockets anytime soon, from June 12 to October 18, near the entrance to the Oakland Museum of California, one can see a Black woman gazing from the center of an image of a $100 bill the size of a twin XL mattress.<\/p>\n

This is a blown-up version of the actual altered currency on display inside\u00a0\u201cMildred Howard: Poetics of Memory,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0the first major survey of the acclaimed East Bay artist\u2019s nearly six-decade career.<\/p>\n

In 1975, Howard put herself in the oval on the front of the hundred and replaced the engraving of Independence Hall in Philadelphia on the back with a photo of her alma mater, the College of Alameda. According to the exhibition label, \u201cThis is the earliest known example of her use of found material, collage, self-portraiture, photography and printmaking.\u201d According to my notes, it\u2019s also a wonderful example of a young artist making the leap from \u201cWhat if\u2026?\u201d to \u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n

Howard\u2019s art can astonish, amuse, provoke and intrigue. Her materials include bronze, glass, paper, textiles and film, but just about anything at hand could inspire her. \u201cPocketbook in Flight\u201d (2023) came about when she put a pair of bird wings in her mother\u2019s alligator purse and imagined how it would look in bronze. It\u2019s an elegant, surreal object but also a relatable joke. Said Howard, \u201cBecause money\u2019s always flying out the door!\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes her earlier work will seem just the tonic for the present moment. A pair of thick books open on pedestals look as if someone has shot neat holes through the pages. Made in 2007, the work is titled \u201cVolume I & II: History of the United States with a Few Missing Parts.\u201d Also from 2007, \u201cWhat Came First\u201d shows a giant chicken head rising out of a model of the U.S. Capitol Building.<\/p>\n

At the press preview, jazz pianist Bill Evans\u2019s\u00a0\u201cPeace Piece\u201d<\/a>\u00a0played in the galleries and Howard talked about the silences between the notes. \u201cHe gives time to think about the music and the space,\u201d she said. \u201cThis show is space so that you can see the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking at a bronze kitten-heeled pump jutting from a bronze hat form mounted on a garden hoe, 2024\u2019s \u201cAnother Hook with a Ho,\u201d my mind fills the spaces in the sculpture to see a Jazz Age dancer swinging her foot above her cloche hat. A great pleasure of Howard\u2019s art is how she can juice the viewer\u2019s own impressions, memories and ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cObjects have history and they have meaning,\u201d Howard has said. \u201cBut how do you take something that\u2019s used for one thing and repurpose it into an artwork of an entirely different meaning? How can you expand your imagination and create a different way of looking?\u201d<\/p>\n

A lifelong immersion in the arts and community engagement informs her work. The youngest of 10 children, she became the first native Californian in the family when she was born in San Francisco in 1945. Her parents Rolly and Mable \u201cMama\u201d Howard were part of the Black Great Migration, moving from Texas to San Francisco for jobs and opportunities during WWII. Mable was the first Black woman to join the painters\u2019 union in California, opening the door for others to follow. At a very early age Mable enrolled Mildred in dance classes and later, art classes. \u201cI was performing by the time I was five, in fact, in front of Oakland City Hall,\u201d she said at the June 11 opening reception. \u201cI can remember performing for union groups and things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Howard has 16 works of permanent, public art \u2013 an unusually high number for a woman artist, let alone a Black woman artist. Located throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, they include\u00a0\u201cSalty Peanuts,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0a 16 x 25\u201d assemblage of saxophones sandwiched between the opening stanzas of Dizzy Gillespie\u2019s \u201cSalt Peanuts\u201d in SFO\u2019s international terminal; an ornate 20\u201d\u00a0picture frame<\/a>\u00a0straddling a walkway near the site of the former naval shipyard in Hunters Point; and \u201cThree Shades of Blue,\u201d a Quincy Troupe\u00a0poem<\/a>\u00a0etched in blue glass on a Fillmore Street overpass walkway bridging Japantown and the Western Addition, historically Japanese and Black neighborhoods. \u201cDelivered, Mable\u2019s Promissory Note,\u201d\u00a0a bronze sculpture at the Ashby BART station<\/a>, honors her mother, a people\u2019s rights activist who, in the 1960\u2019s, led the successful movement to keep an above ground BART station from fracturing a Black neighborhood in South Berkeley.<\/p>\n

These public works, some of which are in a video in the exhibition, reflect on Black culture, American history, justice and community. Whether you know the back stories or not, they make you look, think and sometimes laugh. But unlike works that hang on walls, it\u2019s rare for the public to know the name of the artist behind public art.<\/p>\n

Something surprising happened on my way to the press preview. I got turned around outside Lake Merritt BART and asked a trio of women for directions to the museum. They appeared to be in their sixties and were wearing lanyard photo IDs. They pointed me the right way and asked what was going on there. Before I could answer, another woman behind me said, \u201cMildred Howard!\u201d and my three guides fizzed with excitement. I wish I\u2019d had time to ask them how they knew about Mildred Howard, but I was running late. It struck me as remarkable, though, that any living artist would have that kind of sidewalk name recognition.<\/p>\n

When I shared this encounter with Howard\u2019s grandson Mylez Brown, he laughed. \u201cShe\u2019s made a hell of an impact on a lot of people,\u201d he said. \u201cMore than she actually knows.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown, who is an artist, musician and filmmaker, grew up with his grandmother and shares a studio with her. \u201cA lot of times when people speak about her artwork, they separate the art and the artist \u2026 Yes, she creates these monuments and things like that, but the reality of it is creativity IS her. She is her creativity in every facet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown recently completed a documentary,\u00a0\u201cMildred Howard: Memories in Motion.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u201cIn the documentary she said it\u2019s important to be generous with time, with the way you treat people \u2026 I think a lot of the stuff she does \u2013 the community, the ties, the mentorship, it\u2019s all about bridging the gap between what has happened before and what happened after and presenting that to people.\u201d<\/p>\n

He talked about the Berkeley neighborhood where his grandmother, his mother and uncle and he all grew up. \u201cThere\u2019s an extreme amount of familial history within that specific area \u2026Within those four blocks I met a new cousin every day of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly, they\u2019ve lost their hold on the neighborhood Mama Mable fought to save. In 2017, the landlord doubled the rent on Howard\u2019s Berkeley home studio. Brown said that two years ago, the last family house in Berkeley was sold. Today Howard lives and works in a loft in West Oakland.<\/p>\n

Despite being scattered from their Berkeley home base, four generations of Mildred Howard\u2019s family \u2013 nearly two dozen relatives \u2013 gathered in the largest gallery, a darkened room glowing with red sculptures and installations, for family photos. Nearby, \u201cMoving Stills,\u201d a 2026 OCMA commission, played against the longest wall. Scenes from layered screens of Super 8 footage Mildred shot when she was 14 bloomed and melted behind a white scrim woven with leaves: Mildred\u2019s classmates. Her \u201cfirst trip to the South to visit great aunts who were born in the late 1800\u2019s.\u201d Her mother in an aqua knit top.<\/p>\n

Howard found the film in her late mother\u2019s alligator purse. \u201cIdeas are always there,\u201d she said. \u201cYou just have to look deeply.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: Published without changes from American Community Media<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ByTeresa Moore It\u2019s been ten years since the U.S. Treasury secretary announced that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7574,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-black-history"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t