A Life on Paper: The Drawings and Lithographs of John Thomas Biggers

Afterword

Afterword This manuscript was completed during the time of the great hurricane Katrina-caused flood in New Orleans on August 31 and the first week of September 2005. While I watched television news covering the flooded city and its stranded citizens who were so disproportionately African American and poor, John Biggers’s drawings came to my mind. In his early drawings he had depicted the struggle of the working poor with such empathy. It was the part of life that he had known the best. He had seen the exhaustion of a mother trying to shield her children from poverty and illness. He knew the desperation of the elderly without resources who could not care for themselves. The faces glimpsed on the flickering screen could have come from John Biggers’s sketchbook. He was well acquainted with poverty, racism, and injustice. He spent the last half of his career infusing his art with optimism and hope. He had a passion for art and believed that somehow his art could lift up his cherished people to the very best of life. As he came to accept and treasure his life’s journey as an African American pioneer, he developed powerful iconic images that resonated with many viewers. Television viewers of Katrina’s destruction agonized while watching so many families clinging together, desperate for help. Those tragic circumstances reaffirmed that all people comprise one human family. John Biggers knew that truth and held it sacred. His art was filled with a reverence for the family, past, present, and future. He offered his art as a gift to the future. ALife.indb 131 7/24/06 2:23:16 PM 132 AFTERWORD John Biggers has surely attained his goal, that of speaking to the human spirit through his uniquely African American art. figure 99 John and Hazel Biggers in their garden 1998 figure 100 John Biggers in front of his studio 1998 ALife.indb 132 7/24/06 2:23:24 PM 133 AFTERWORD figure 101 John Biggers at work in his studio figure 102 Hazel Biggers and author (photo by John Biggers) ALife.indb 133 7/24/06 2:23:33 PM 134 AFTERWORD figure 103 John Biggers working in his studio ALife.indb 134 7/24/06 2:23:38 PM ...