Infinite Shades of Black

Brandon Hill, Schroeder Cherry, and Chukwudinma Nsofor journey from Nigeria to Brazil to the Old West. Also: Susan Due Pearcy's poignant prints and Pyramid Atlantic's packed member show

Brandon Hill, “Lookin" (Culturehouse)

FROM AFRICA TO THE AMERICAN WEST, the themes of area Black artists Brandon Hill, Schroeder Cherry, and Chukwudinma Nsofor are strikingly diverse. But there's even more distance between their styles, which are all representational but share nothing else.

Hill is best known as a muralist, a background reflected in the boldness and directness of "Black Cowboy: American Muscle," his Culturehouse show. Perhaps 25 percent of 19th- and early-20th-century cowboys were Black, a little-known historical fact that inspires the Baltimore-raised D.C. artist. But Hill's paintings and sculpture include just a few pictures of cowpokes, and are executed with bold colors and streamlined imagery that owe more to Andy Warhol than the likes of Black cowboy and rodeo performer Bill Pickett.

Hill introduces his approach with a swaggering abstract pattern painted on the wall of the gravel parking lot Culturehouse calls its "avant garden." Similar colors and motifs appear in the art inside the building, whether as backdrops to portraits of cowboys or applied to found objects, one of which is a life-size "carnival display cow."

The artist both celebrates and recasts the mythology of the American West. Among his subjects are coiled barbed wire and oversized cigarette packs, all rendered as wall-mounted sculptures. The 3D boxes eulogize near-vanished notions of raw-throated masculinity, and allow Hill to tip his Stetson to advertising art, clearly an influence on his neo-pop style. But they're also the occasion for racial commentary, as when "New Boro" splices a pack of Marlboros, a brand long pitched with cowboy iconography, with one of Newport menthols, successfully peddled to Black urbanites. The age of the cowboy is gone, but macho, merchandising, and racial division persist.

As cluttered as Hill's artworks are sleek, Schroeder Cherry's assemblages on wood center on portraits of Black people. The subjects are often young -- some are in a series titled "Future Voter" -- and painted in a primitivist style. These figures are surrounded by arrays of found objects, often symbolic. Among the repeated ingredients are keys and locks, suggesting bondage and freedom, and shards of broken mirrors, hinting at fragmented identity. Also frequently collaged are fragments of ornate picture frames -- one of which is embedded with bullet shells -- and playing cards that portray Black kings and queens.

A D.C.-raised Baltimore artist, Cherry often evokes the lives and travails of Blacks in the United States. But he also draws from the traditions of Salvador, the center of Afro-Brazilian culture. Brazilian paper currency denotes his travels there, and images of Black Brazilian drummers testify to vibrancy of the country's African-derived culture. The Afro-Brazilian influence seems to extend to several assemblages whose dominant feature is a candlestick, a feature whose presence suggests an altar. In the U.S., Cherry ponders socio-political issues; in Brazil, his outlook turns worshipful.

Chukwudinma Nsofor, “Celebration (Citizens of Nowhere)” (Amy Kaslow Gallery)

Hill's cowboys are solitary, as are most of the people in Cherry's collages. But Chukwudinma Nsofor's pictures often appear to be teeming with people, maybe crowded into markets or pressed together in ecstatic dances. Admittedly, this impression of the work in the painter's self-titled Amy Kaslow Gallery show could be entirely wrong. The Nigeria-raised D.C.-area artist employs a style that's mostly gestural, rendering figures with a looseness that recalls Willem de Kooning, the most abstract-expressionist of representational painters.

The show does include a set of sketches of single faces made with just a few strokes, and a large pencil and charcoal drawing of a group of "Sistas." These starker pictures are less colorful, but often include a splash or pink or slash of red. Nsofor's subjects, often subtitled "Citizens of Nowhere," are clearly human. But they're more action than weight, more pigment than flesh.

Brandon Hill: Black Cowboy: American Muscle

Through April 26 at Culture House, 700 Delaware Ave. SW. culturehousedc.org.

Open Ended Narratives: Mixed Media Assemblages on Wood by Schroeder Cherry

Through April 5 at Stamp Gallery, Adele H. Stamp Student Union, University of Maryland, College Park. stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery

Chukwudinma Nsofor: Chukwudinma!

Through April 13 at Amy Kaslow Gallery, 7920 Norfolk Ave., Bethesda. amykaslowgallery.com.

Susan Due Pearcy, "Ashes to Ashes -- Exit" (Pyramid Atlantic Art Center)

AFTER HER HUSBAND'S DEATH, Susan Due Pearcy decided to "let go" by burning medical documents. Despite the flames, she found, some words remained legible. This inspired her to incorporate the ashes and surviving shards of text into handmade paper that she then used for prints and drawings. Eight of these rough-textured artworks are on exhibit at the National Institutes of Health as "Ashes to Ashes -- A Caregiver's Journey."

As inventive as they are poignant, the pictures both document her husband's cancer-treatment experiences and embody visions of hope and rebirth. Drawings of birds and actual leaves are embedded into the craggy, partly scorched paper. The material itself -- damaged, mutable, only partly reclaimed -- is fascinating and touching.

It's possible to see the show at NIH, but gaining admittance is complicated. It would be simpler to view the one piece from the series that's at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, where "Ashes to Ashes -- Exit" is included in "Member MashUP." The etching-drawing-collage is perhaps the most somber entry in the exhibition, which was juried by Helen Frederick and contains work by more than 200 artists.

Any attempt to review this jam-packed show would simply produce a glorified list. The range is vast, from the geometric (Katherine Bramante's colorful collage of overlapping striped squares; Sally Canzoneri's 3D folded-paper sculpture) to the organic (Sallie Lowenstein's photocarving of a nearly hidden bird; Elzbieta Sikorska's layered drawing of animal's head). Among the more remarkable items are Sarah Matthews's all-text letterpress print and Ann Stoddard's 3D photograph of an American flag inside a police evidence container. Like Pearcy, Stoddard renders ordinary things mysterious with crags, folds, and shadows.

Susan Due Pearcy: Ashes to Ashes -- A Caregiver's Journey

Through April 6 at National Institutes of Health, Building 10, West Gallery, First Floor, 10 Center Dr., Bethesda.

Member MashUP

Through April 20 at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, 4318 Gallatin St., Hyattsville. pyramidatlanticartcenter.org. 301-608-9101.