Radcliffe Bailey will be UNC artist-in-residence for 2 weeks

Radcliffe Bailey has often been hailed as an international voice for southern African American racial identity.

But his artwork — paintings, sculptures and collages mixing family portraits with historical events — also brims with a profound personal significance as he aims to decipher his own cultural heritage.

“I walk the line between generations,” Bailey said.

The balance between national history and familial memory in Bailey’s work brought him to the University’s art department as this fall’s artist-in-residence.

The artist-in-residence program brings one prominent artist per semester to UNC to hold undergraduate lectures, critique graduate projects and speak about their own work.

The program was previously a semester long, but it was cut to two weeks in 2001 due to budget constraints.

A recent donation to the art department will allow the artist-in-residence program to be prolonged in upcoming years, said Jeff Whetstone, the director of graduate studies in studio art.

“It is still by far the most productive thing we do as far as real world learning,” said Cary Levine, assistant professor of art and curator for Bailey’s lecture.

With artists as well known and successful as Bailey, there is barely enough time to extract his expertise, said professor Juan Logan, former chairman of the Intellectual Life Committee, the group that organizes the artist-in-residence program.

“I would love to see them back to inviting artists for a whole semester,” Logan said.

But when faced with this constraint, the art department has opted to bring in well-known artists — like Bailey — for two weeks, rather than bring in less established artists for the whole term, Levine said.

Bailey’s highly anticipated arrival at UNC was coordinated by the Intellectual Life Committee, which has brought nationally recognized artists to the University since 1981.

He joins such notable past artists-in-residence as Bill Fick, Judy Chicago and Endi Poskovic.

The committee aims to bring in a wide range of artists — from prominent painters to philosophers — for all art students to interact with.

As a child, Bailey wanted to be a baseball player, but he attended the Atlanta College of Art at the request of his mother. There, he studied sculpture and painted in his free time.

Previously a resident artist at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, Bailey said he thinks UNC’s two-week program is not conducive to producing work in the provided studios.

“I wish it were longer,” Bailey said. “Then I’d be able to set up a studio and make things. I just couldn’t imagine getting a studio ready within two weeks and starting work.”

Instead, Bailey will focus on visiting graduate studios to critique students’ work and cultivate new ideas, said Whetstone.

“The goal is to get a fresh perspective on their work,” Whetstone said.

“When a prolific and prominent artist like Radcliffe Bailey comes in and gives a new perspective to your work it’s incredibly useful.”

Contact the Arts Editor at artsdesk@unc.edu.