Opening Reception + Discussion: Erin Kendrick, The Hotelmen

A native to Jacksonville, during her residency at the CEAM last spring, the artist explored the Negro baseball league’s presence in St. Augustine, specifically the Cuban Giants, and their connection to the Hotel Ponce de Leon. Kendrick’s research and engagement with some of the Black historical sites of St. Augustine and present-day Flagler College have both inspired and informed her new body of work for The Hotelmen.

The exhibition will feature new mixed media works on paper, paintings, and installations. She has created six new pennant flag portraits of renowned players from the Negro leagues at the turn of the 20th century, including Frank Thompson who was a part of the Cuban Giants team as well as head waiter at the Hotel Ponce de Leon. These works are rendered in a style characteristic of Kendrick’s body of work; portraits imbued with colorful layers, that are simultaneously painterly and graphic. Three new paintings on paper juxtapose historical images of the cakewalk set against fluid black contour portraits of baseball players in motion. The artist represents the Negro league baseball as an intentional economic endeavor of the Black community, as opposed to a recreation for hire in the climate of the Jim Crow, pre-Civil Rights era. Through these works that examine contemporary as well as historic spectatorship, Kendrick invites us to engage with the history and legacy of Black representation and engagement in our local community.

Presenter’s Bios:

Kendrick’s work has been included in solo and group exhibitions at venues such as Yellow House, Jacksonville; Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville; Florida State College at Jacksonville; Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Museum, Port Elizabeth, South Africa; New Orleans African American Museum; and the Ritz Theater and Museum, Jacksonville, among others. She is the recipient of the Jackie Cornelius Art Residency (Douglas Anderson School of the Arts), the Lift Every Student Artist-In-Residence, and the Community First Foundation Art Ventures Individual Artist grants. She is currently the Director of Education and Lead Visual Art Instructor at Jacksonville Arts & Music School and teaches in the Department of Visual Art at Flagler College. In 2019 was named the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville’s 2019 Art Educator of the Year. Kendrick maintains a studio at CoRK Arts District in Jacksonville, Florida.

Dr. Gylbert Coker (b. 1944, Harlem, NY) is an African-American art historian, curator, and museum director who has worked to establish Black artists and art in the canon of American art. She was an early member of Where We At, a group of Black women artists established in 1971 who created the first exhibition of Black women’s art. In 1972 Dr. Coker was hired at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum becoming the first black person to work in the administration department. The following year she was working in the Registration Department at The Museum of Modern Art. In 1974 she became the first curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem. As a writer her reviews appeared in many publications, including the Amsterdam News, Art in America, The International Review of African American Art. Retired, today she focuses her attention on revising her two books on the history of East Florida.

This program is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and a grant from the Dr. JoAnn Crisp-Ellert Fund at The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida.