David Driskell: Wake Up Everybody

Jenkins Johnson Gallery is pleased to present David C. Driskell: Wake Up Everybody, a new exhibition celebrating the creative legacy of the legendary artist, curator, art historian, and educator David C. Driskell. Featuring works created between 1960 and the early 2000s, the exhibition brings together paintings, works on paper, collage, and printmaking—including linocuts, woodcuts, and serigraphs.

David C. Driskell was a lifelong artist, but he perennially prioritized the support and promotion of other artists ahead of himself. Driskell was an arts educator for nearly 40 years and a pioneering curator, but all the while he maintained a personal artistic practice which defied categorization. This exhibition samples some of his diverse areas of interest and means of expression: figuration and abstraction, Christian devotional art and traditional African craft, landscapes and natural phenomena, jazz musicians and more rendered through painting, collage, assemblage and printmaking. The selected works also reflect the breadth of Driskell’s life experiences, drawing inspiration from his upbringing in the American South, his travels throughout Africa, and his deep connection to the landscape of Maine. 

The exhibition title is drawn from the 1975 song Wake Up Everybody, written and performed by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, featuring a young Teddy Pendergrass. The song stands as a call to action, speaking to a variety of communities to rise up and be part of the new consciousness of the era. Taking particular note of the lyric “Wake up all the teachers, time to teach a new way,” we wish to honor Driskell’s enduring influence as a teacher and mentor to generations of African American artists.