The Salon by NADA and The Community

“In Edmonia Lewis, Heritage #2, he provides a warm vision of a major 19th century female sculptor and a chief figure in the long tradition of African American art history. Lewis, largely untaught in most conventional art history classes and absent in standard American art history texts, was born in 1844 of both African American and Chippewa heritage. As a student at Oberlin College, she was subject to racist attacks and bogus criminal charges and eventually left for Italy, where she produced her sculptures in a neoclassical style. Most of her marble works were lost, but more recently some of her work has been rediscovered and her reputation as a great forerunner has been established and solidified.

In this collage on board, Westmoreland places Lewis at the right in front of her renowned sculpture Old Arrow Maker, now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. A tribute to her American Indian ancestors and their crafts, the work is unusual in American art history for its dignified treatment of an oppressed minority. Recognizing that tragic reality, Westmoreland places his familiar target next to Lewis’s artwork.”

– Paul von Blum, Creative Souls: African American Artists in Greater Los Angeles, 2018