Artist Statement
LA 19 did not start recently, but has been developing over the course of my life. Growing up an Army brat, my idea of what home is has become fluid and malleable. The one constant was the family vacations to visit my extended family, who for the most part live on or off of Louisiana state highway nineteen. Whether I was in Germany, Oklahoma, Indiana or Texas, Louisiana never changed. There I was home, but foreign. Having to rebuild relationships constantly and yet always fitting in. Part of a large family dominated by women. Women that work hard, pray hard, love hard and laugh out loud.
My work begins by photographing family members and heirloom quilts as precious object. Quilts have become a symbol for the African-American experience and of those things that get passed down from generation to generation, be it good or bad. Instead of using paper, I printed these images along with documentary style portraits of my family onto fabric. The printed images are stitched together with various other patches to create the final pieces. These works allow me to speak about family, heritage and issues unique to my community. Process Statement
All the pieces are pigment prints on fabric, and are each hand sewn into the finished piece. I shoot digitally and then print the images onto cotton and silk fabrics that are treated to hold the image. These are actual quilts, dresses and quilt tops.

 

 

Letitia Huckaby began her artistic career at the age of four, when here parents started her in dance classes. She studied Ballet, Tap, Jazz, and Modern until the age of eighteen, and was selected to participate in the prestigious Oklahoma Arts Institute two years in a row. It was this exposure to a variety of other art forms that led her to photography. After gaining a degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma, she went on to obtain a BFA from the Art Institute of Boston in photography and her Master’s degree from the University of North Texas in Denton. Mrs. Huckaby has exhibited at the Dallas Contemporary, the Galveston Arts Center, Renaissance Fine Art in Harlem curated by Deborah Willis, PhD, the McKenna Museum in New Orleans, and the Dallas African-American Museum. She has a body of work on permanent display in a historic jazz club in Boston called Wally’s, one public art piece along the Trinity river in Fort Worth at the 4th street trailhead site, and a second public art piece at a new Ella Mae Shamblee branch library in Fort Worth.

 

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