Born in rural Conehatta, Mississippi, artist Joe Overstreet (1933–2019) spent six decades expanding the possibilities of abstract painting. His vibrant works break through the four edges of a conventional canvas, leap off the wall, and expand to immense proportions. Unfolding in space like kites, sails, or the patterns of a kaleidoscope, they invite viewers to see and move through paintings in new ways.
Though Overstreet migrated away from the South at a young age, he cultivated a visual imagination there that would ground and propel a lifetime of artistic experimentation in a changing world. When Mississippi became an epicenter of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in the 1960s, Overstreet and other African American artists grappled with art’s role in societal transformation. Looking for new, unifying models of Black cultural identity and expression, Overstreet joined a larger groundswell of poets, musicians, dramatists, and visual artists that came to be known as the Black Arts Movement.
Surveying the artist’s dynamic contributions to this movement and beyond, Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight tells the story of his life’s work in abstraction. The exhibition brings together three phases of Overstreet’s painting practice: angular, geometric constructions from the 1960s, the sculptural Flight Pattern series from the 1970s, and the large-scale, immersive Facing the Door of No Return series from the 1990s. “Like birds in flight,” as Overstreet described, his paintings embody a restless tendency “to take off, to lift up, rather than be held down.”
Coinciding with the exhibition’s closing, MMA will host a two-day program that explores Overstreet’s work with Kenkeleba House, a community arts organization that Overstreet cofounded on New York’s Lower East Side in 1974. The event will connect this important part of Overstreet’s career to Black-led arts initiatives active in Jackson today. Visit msmuseumart.org to learn more and register.
Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight is organized by the Menil Collection, Houston. Its presentation in Jackson is supported by Teiger Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, and Visit Jackson.