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Four Elements

Charles Searles

by Synatra Smith, Ph.D. on 2022-06-02T12:00:00-04:00 in Archives, Black Artists | 0 Comments

Charles Searles was an African American painter and sculptor born on July 11, 1937, in Philadelphia. He enlisted in the army in 1957 and served for two years in Japan and Korea. Searles developed an interest in African art in the 1960s when he visited the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (known as the Penn Museum) in Philadelphia. He worked as a laboratory technician in the chemistry department of the university, and would spend his lunch hour visiting the museum to make wood carvings of exhibited archaeological and ethnographic objects. He was also inspired by Alexander Calder’s work. After deferring his admission to finish high school, Searles enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in 1967. The following year he opened a storefront studio in Philadelphia at Seventeenthand South Streets to teach art to local children on Saturdays. He taught painting and drawing classes at the Ile Ife Black Humanitarian Center in Philadelphia from 1970 to 1973, drawing classes at the Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts) from 1972 to 1994, and adult drawing classes at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1972 to 1974. He graduated from PAFA in 1972, and his first public art commission was a 1976 mural at the William J. Green Jr. Federal Building in Philadelphia. 

Searles received a graduate fellowship in 1972 to visit Nigeria, Ghana, and Morocco. He later recounted,

What really hit me was that the art was in the people. The way the people carried themselves, dressed, decorated their houses became the art to me, like a living art…In Africa it was checks against stripes against polka dots…When I got back I began to paint things combining patterns together….My works…often feel like animal forms, masks, or figures, and feel very much alive….A sense of humor, which I enjoy, is also felt in some of the pieces. My work is serious fun.[1]

Classical African sculpture prominently influenced Searles, especially his use of pattern, which he saw as giving his art a sense of movement.[2] He described his works as “non-traditional sculpture” with “strong cross-cultural references…as well as a contemporary eye toward the future.”[3]

Searles moved to New York in 1978. He later became a member of Philadelphia-based African American artist group Recherché (1983–87) and taught drawing classes at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School (1984–95) and painting at the Pratt Institute in New York (1995–97). He was a visiting artist at City University of New York in April 1989, and an artist-in-residence at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey in July 1989. He and African American artist James Phillips were friends, and they influenced each other’s work. Searles had a passion for percussion and was the percussionist and group leader for the band Skins, Winds, and Rhythm. After completing a sculpture, he would play the drums for thirty minutes, explaining, “I tell myself I’m putting the spirit into it.”[4]

Searles died from a stroke in his home in New York on November 27, 2004. 

PMA Collection

PMA Library

PMA Archive

 

Notes

[1] Searles, quoted in McKenna, Simon, and Wardlaw 1989, 289. 

[2] Searles, quoted in Thompson 1989, 109.

[3] Searles 1989.

[4] Searles, quoted in Zimmer 1989.

 

References

McKenna, Maureen A., Elizabeth Simon, and Alvia J. Wardlaw. 1989. “The Artists.” In Black Art, Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African-American Art, edited by Robert V. Rozelle, Wardlaw, and McKenna. Exh. cat. Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art. 

Philadelphia Inquirer. 2004. “Charles Searles.” November 28, 2004. https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/philly/obituary.aspx?n=charles-searles&pid=2864970

Scarborough, Klare, and Susanna Gold, eds. 2013. Charles Searles. Exh. cat. Philadelphia: La Salle University Art Museum.

Searles, Charles. 1989. “Statement by the Artist.” In Charles Searles: Recent Sculpture, September 24–December 17, 1989. Oceanville, NJ: Noyes Museum.

Thompson, Robert Farris. 1989. “The Song that Named the Land: The Visionary Presence of African-American Art.” In Black Art, Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African-American Art, edited by Robert V. Rozelle, Alvia Wardlaw, and Maureen A. McKenna. Exh. cat. Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art.
Zimmer, William. 1989. “Considerations of Charles Searles.” In Charles Searles: Recent Sculpture, September 24–December 17, 1989, n.p. Oceanville, NJ: Noyes Museum.


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