Celebrating Diversity

Jacob Lawrence (American, 1917–2000) The Wedding, 1948 In strong, clear colors and pronounced angular lines, Jacob Lawrence painted a wedding scene that reflects both the joy and gravity of the ceremony. Lawrence believed that conveying his emotions about a subject was just as important as portraying its likeness, and The Wedding shows just how the artist used his unique style to highlight both narrative and sentiment. Reflect on momentous celebrations and everyday joys as you put together this 1000-piece puzzle of Lawrence’s vivid painting.

• Gather with family and friends for puzzle-piecing together!
• Our luxury puzzles are crafted with attention to every detail
• High-quality 250-GSM matte artpaper for superior color, crisp details, and no glare
• Ribbon-cut thick board for snug fit and minimal dust
• Produced using thick recycled paper board
• Exclusive selection of art from museums and artists around the world

Published with the Art Institute of Chicago

• Box size: 13 x 10 x 1.875 in.
• Puzzle size: 25 x 20 in.

Lawrence, the best known black American artist of the 20th century, developed the series of thirty panels, each measuring 12 × 16 inches, over the course of two years. Lawrence created the panels as history you could hold in your hands and intended to reproduce the images in a book that he never realized. The paintings depict signal moments in the American Revolution and the early decades of the American republic, and feature the words and actions of founding fathers, enslaved people, women, and Native Americans. 

In January 2020, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, is mounting the landmark exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle. The show, which unites the panels in one place for the first time in nearly half a century, then travels to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., on a two-year national tour.

In the spirit of Lawrence’s project, this collection includes brief interpretive texts written by teens in response to the Struggle series. This illustrated book features a chorus of thirty singular young adult voices expressing how Lawrence and his Struggle series speaks to them on a personal, emotional level. The young writers come from a broad variety of races and ethnicities, nationalities, religions, genders, sexualities, and abilities, and underrepresented voices. As Jacob Lawrence mined American history to reflect upon events he saw happening around him in segregation-era America, these young adults use these panels to comment on their experiences in today’s America.

• Hardcover, 200 pages
• Grade level 9-12

The Sande Society of the Mende people of Sierra Leone is a secret female regulatory society that both guards and transmits the ideals of feminine beauty so fundamental to the aesthetic criteria in Mende culture. 

In this eloquent and moving book, Sylvia Ardyn Boone describes the Society, its rituals and organization, and the mask worn by its members. Her book is an evocative account of Mende life and philosophy as well as a unique contribution to the study of African art, one based on African conceptions about the person and the human body.

An unprecedented visual history of African women told in striking and subversive historical photographs--featuring an Introduction by Edwidge Danticat and a Foreword by Jacqueline Woodson.

Most of us grew up with images of African women that were purely anthropological--bright displays of exotica where the deeper personhood seemed tucked away. Or they were chronicles of war and poverty--“poverty porn.” But now, curator Catherine E. McKinley draws on her extensive collection of historical and contemporary photos to present a visual history spanning a hundred-year arc (1870–1970) of what is among the earliest photography on the continent. These images tell a different story of African women: how deeply cosmopolitan and modern they are in their style; how they were able to reclaim the tools of the colonial oppression that threatened their selfhood and livelihoods.

Featuring works by celebrated African masters, African studios of local legend, and anonymous artists, The African Lookbook captures the dignity, playfulness, austerity, grandeur, and fantasy-making of African women across centuries. McKinley also features photos by Europeans--most starkly, striking nudes--revealing the relationships between white men and the Black female sitters where, at best, a grave power imbalance lies. It’s a bittersweet truth that when there is exploitation there can also be profound resistance expressed in unexpected ways--even if it’s only in gazing back. These photos tell the story of how the sewing machine and the camera became powerful tools for women’s self-expression, revealing a truly glorious display of everyday beauty.

These highly collectible baskets are handmade in eSwatini (Swaziland) from sisal fibers.

Dimensions: 11 3/4" diameter x 3 3/8" deep

These highly collectible baskets are handmade in eSwatini (Swaziland) from sisal fibers.

Dimensions: 11 3/4" diameter x 3 5/8" deep

by Clara Applewhaite-Mitchell

Glen Ridge, New Jersey

Clara Applewhaite-Mitchell has spent a lifetime in the creative arts, as a Printmaker, Silk Painter, Textile Designer and Teacher, with 15 years experience in the New York / New Jersey Textile industry. Specializing in the "Gutta Serti" method of silk painting. The main theme for her work speaks to the eco and socio-economic injustices to the world environment. This is reflected in the bold, yet vivid elements of flora and fauna, intertwined with striking motifs of her multi-cultural Trinidadian heritage. 

• Dimensions: 13" x 70"
• 10mm weight Habotai Silk
• Original hand-painted design

 Browse Collection 

by Clara Applewhaite-Mitchell

Glen Ridge, New Jersey

Clara Applewhaite-Mitchell has spent a lifetime in the creative arts, as a Printmaker, Silk Painter, Textile Designer and Teacher, with 15 years experience in the New York / New Jersey Textile industry. Specializing in the "Gutta Serti" method of silk painting. The main theme for her work speaks to the eco and socio-economic injustices to the world environment. This is reflected in the bold, yet vivid elements of flora and fauna, intertwined with striking motifs of her multi-cultural Trinidadian heritage. 

• Dimensions: 14" x 70"
• 10mm weight Habotai Silk
• Original hand-painted design

 Browse Collection 

by Clara Applewhaite-Mitchell

Glen Ridge, New Jersey

Clara Applewhaite-Mitchell has spent a lifetime in the creative arts, as a Printmaker, Silk Painter, Textile Designer and Teacher, with 15 years experience in the New York / New Jersey Textile industry. Specializing in the "Gutta Serti" method of silk painting. The main theme for her work speaks to the eco and socio-economic injustices to the world environment. This is reflected in the bold, yet vivid elements of flora and fauna, intertwined with striking motifs of her multi-cultural Trinidadian heritage. 

• Dimensions: 13" x 70"
• 10mm weight Habotai Silk
• Original hand-painted design

 Browse Collection 

 Introduction by Jessica Bell Brown. Text by Tracy K. Smith, Imani Perry, Awoye Timpo, V. Mitch McEwen, Ruha Benjamin, Mario Moore

Over the years, artist and Detroit native Mario Moore (born 1987) has observed that the halls of elite institutions like universities and art museums prominently feature portraits of donors, deans, presidents, board members and scholars, and that the subjects of those portraits are mostly white and male. When Moore was selected as a Princeton University Hodder Fellow in 2018, he wanted to ask what positions garner such attention and how could painting contribute to conversations on who deserves to be recognized. He set out to meet Black men and women who work in and around Princeton University in blue-collar jobs and let the art-making process unfold from their collaborative interactions. In the resulting works, Moore redefines the colonial gaze for the subjects he paints, allowing them to look directly out with an unflinching stare. This publication includes sketches, drawings, etchings and paintings.

• Published by the Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University
• Hardcover, 9 x 11 in. / 128 pgs / 60 color
• Limited signed copies available.  Please specify.
   

Renowned painter Jacob Lawrence made his mark on modern art with his devotion to documenting the everyday life and struggles of African Americans throughout history. He is known for depicting the lives of subjects such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and John Brown. In his first narrative series, The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Lawrence portrays Toussaint’s journey from a child enslaved at birth to a general who helped lead the Haitian Revolution, using historical events to explore his own contemporary Black experience. The original series, painted between 1936 and 1938, consisted of 41 panels. Fifty years later, he revisited the series, re-creating it as 15 silkscreen prints. Lawrence’s reimagining is a testament to the connection and passion that he felt toward the innate themes of the series. Twelve of these prints are featured in this calendar so that we may continue the storied tradition of retelling—with Toussaint’s narrative as well as with Lawrence’s.

• 12 monthly grids and full-color artwork
• High-quality printing with soy-based inks on premium, environmentally sourced paper stock
• Exceptional color quality
• Grid pages are easy to write on
• Features US, Canadian, and United Kingdom legal holidays
• Perfect for hanging at home or over an office desk
• Pomegranate’s calendars feature exclusive selections of art from museums and artists around the world
• Size: 12 x 13 x .125 in. 
• Opens to: 12 x 26 in.