Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Colette Gaiter

Colette Gaiter, Associate Professor of Visual Communication, Department of Art & Design, University of Delaware.

After working in graphic design for ten years in Pittsburgh, Washington, DC and New York, she became an educator, artist and writer. She has exhibited her work internationally and in galleries, museums and public institutions in the United States such as the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston, Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

As a pioneer in new media art since 1982, she presented and exhibited her work at SIGGRAPH, ISEA, and other new international new media venues. Currently her work remains interdisciplinary—from artist books to mixed media sculptural objects and textiles, usually including digital imagery.

Her writing on former Black Panther artist Emory Douglas’s work appears in the monograph Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas, and West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977, among other publications. Since 2004, she continues to write about Douglas’s work including his current international human rights activism. She wrote the introduction to the second edition of his monograph, published in 2011.

An essay on Cuban artists in The African Americas: A Collaborative Project on the African Diaspora in the Cultures of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States reflects her many visits to the island to study art, design and culture.

Putting her interest in socially engaged art into practice, she initiated two community projects in Wilmington, Delaware— Urban Garden Cinema in 2012 and The Beauty Shop Project, currently underway.
Here are more links to writing and information on Emory Douglas online; Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas,  West of Center Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965–1977 “The Revolution Will Be Visualized: Black Panther Artist Emory Douglas.” From the Black Panthers to Black Lives Matter, Fifty Years of Activist Art by Emory Douglas. Black Panthers and Black Lives Matter – parallels and progressChicago 1969: When Black Panthers aligned with Confederate-flag-wielding, working-class whites.

Visualizing a Revolution: Emory Douglas and The Black Panther Newspaper, AIGA Journal: The Professional Association for Design.

Please Note – Correction to the interview Don Mulford was a California Assemblyman who introduced the gun control bill in response to the Black Panthers. She mistakenly said that Mulford was the Attorney General. 

Emory Douglas © 2015 / Emory Douglas / Artists Rights Society, New York Black Lives Matter Original image, 1976
Colette Gaiter ©2016, Elect/ricity Artist book, 9 x 12 inches
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