Colorful works, recycled materials and profound visual expression, Joe Sam charms the art scene with his discordant, unique and immersive creations. As a mixed-media painter and installation artist, he has long thrilled the creative world with his works marked by political and socio-community issues. A self-taught contemporary artist for forty years, Joe Sam has established himself as one of the leading African-American artists on the contemporary art scene.
Born on August 17, 1938 in Harlem, New York, Joe Sam began his career in educational psychology and as a teacher, before deciding to devote his life to art. He graduated from St. Paul’s College in Virginia with a B.A. in Sociology in 1961, then went on to earn a Master’s degree in Educational Psychology at Columbia University in New York, followed by a Ph.D. in Education and Psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
While still a student at Columbia, Joe Sam conducted educational seminars for public school teachers, as well as at the Floyd Patterson House in the East Village, a residential treatment center for juvenile delinquents. In 1976, he made a firm commitment to youth education and empowerment, becoming director of the Head Start program for the city of San Francisco, California. Parallel to his full-time work, he launched the Black West and Black Jazz series, illustrating his desire to combine art and social commitment.
1985 marked the beginning of Joe Sam’s career as a contemporary artist. After winning a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, he decided to retire from teaching to devote himself fully to his art. This paved the way for his meteoric rise in the art world, punctuated by successive artistic residencies and commissions from institutions such as the San Francisco Mission Police Station Juvenile Detention Center, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Rosa Parks subway station, and the Sharks Ice Center in San Jose, California.
Initially one of the only black artists located at the shipyard, the African-American artist applied himself to making the area’s residences easily accessible to black artists. A key figure in the launch of the STAR Artist-in-Residence program in 1996, he provided a free studio for promising young community artist Malik Seneferu. Today, Malik Seneferu stands out as an emerging artist with a permanent studio at the shipyard, thanks to his support. He has also played a role in recognizing the artistic creativity of contemporary African actors by publicly criticizing local museums for excluding works by artists of color, particularly black artists, from their showcases or collections.
Joe Sam is renowned for creating works from objects found in his immediate environment. He creates colorful assemblages from materials collected on the streets of California. These elements, juxtaposed and cohabiting within the work, form a dissonant, visually captivating whole. His practice includes a wide variety of everyday materials, from bicycle wheels and wooden blocks to plastic pipes and cigarette butts. He also enriches his works with newspaper clippings, archival images and his love of distinct colors, which appear in dabs on his canvases, often accompanied by capital letters. The black American artist also offers cut-out multicultural silhouettes and series of pins, which are miniature works of his public sculptures.
All these elements, put together, represent contextual clues to the message Joe Sam wishes to convey through his art: a political commentary on persistent realities within the black community. Several events have inspired his creations, including the 1978 Jonestown massacre, where hundreds of African-Americans were poisoned by cult leader Jim Jones, the sighting of the black body on the auction block, the LAPD beating of Rodney King, and the Charleston shooting, where three men and six women were tragically murdered at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Through his artistic practice, Joe Sam manages to evoke significant events without dwelling on their tragic and bloody side. His works have the effect of stimulating collective memory, serving as reminders of the condition of black communities, which, while always evolving, often seem to stagnate in the face of persistent challenges.
In addition to his creations for exhibitions, Joe Sam has also produced works for commercial purposes. These include The Invisible Hunters (1987), which was honored with the title of Coretta Scott King Honor Book. He has also designed album covers for artists such as Bobby McFerrin’s Medicine Man (1990), Bennie Maupin and Dr. Patrick Gleeson’s Driving While Black (1998), and Upsurge’s All Hands-on Deck (2000) and Chromatology (2004). Throughout his artistic career in San Francisco, Joe Sam has cultivated friendships with other influential Bay Area painters, such as Robert Colescott, Joe Overstreet, Raymond Saunders, Arthur Monroe and Mary Lovelace O’Neal.
The Museum of the African Diaspora recently hosted, until March 3, a significant exhibition dedicated to the artist “Joe Sam: Text messages”. The presentation highlighted around 20 mixed-media works from key series he created between 1985 and 2020. The corpus on display included pieces from both Joe Sam’s personal collection and private collections. This retrospective showcased the remarkable career of this contemporary artist, while exploring the deeper essence of his artistic practice, reflecting his commitment to the themes that are dear to him.
Joe Sam, who passed away on June 1, stood out as a committed artist whose practice took on a deeply reflective dimension, inviting contemplation of the struggles and legacies of black communities. Through his work, he has succeeded in transforming painful events into powerful testimonies, while fostering a dialogue on identity and collective memory. His latest retrospective at the Museum of the African Diaspora bears witness not only to the importance of his artistic career, but also to the relevance of his message to our contemporary society. In celebrating and paying tribute to his creativity, we also honor the resilience and cultural richness of the communities he represents.
