We did the difficult immediately. The impossible took a little longer.
This is how Hayward Oubre described his World War II service, working to build the 1500-mile Alcan Highway, a military supply route that traversed Canada from Alaska to the continental United States. It also describes Oubre's art practice, especially his creation of wire sculptures, a process he began in the late 1950s and continued for four decades. He did not care that the work was agonizingly slow, physically painful and structurally challenging. He created nearly fifty wire sculptures, most during the 1960s, and they stand apart in his artistic output and are his greatest achievement. Not only do they represent tremendous accomplishment, they also are an engineering feat. They are made from ordinary clothes hangers, much thicker than those of today, and Oubre used only simple pliers and his tremendous hand strength to shape them. Like a chess player, he planned each step of construction far in advance and made works that are resilient, strong and balanced, like the many bridges that his military regiment built in the mere eight months they worked to complete the Alcan Highway.
Oubre was born in 1916 in New Orleans and later attended Dillard University where he played football and became the university's first art major, graduating in 1939. He then continued his studies at Atlanta University with Harlem Renaissance painter Hale Woodruff and sculptor Nancy Elizabeth Prophet as his mentors. In 1941 he was drafted into military service and joined one of the segregated units of black army engineers that constructed the Alcan Highway. [It took 50 years for there to be any recognition of their accomplishment - the Pentagon honored Oubre and other survivors of the group in a public ceremony in 1993.]
After the war, Oubre used the G.I. Bill to enroll at the University of Iowa, where he earned an M.F.A. He was the third African American to earn an M.F.A. there following Elizabeth Catlett and Houston E. Chandler. He added printmaking to his repertoire, studying etching with the internationally renowned Argentine artist Mauricio Lasansky. He also painted, carved sculpture in wood and modeled in clay. He created scenes of African American life recalled from his boyhood in New Orleans as well portraits of his family. It was a time of experimentation but also one of great achievement, productivity and self-discovery.
After graduation, he commenced his college teaching career at Florida A & M University. He later taught at Alabama State College and finally at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina, retiring in 1981. During this time he developed a concise study of color mixing and color relationships that he published and distributed to his students. He continued working until his death in 2006 in Winston-Salem.
Oubre's work was regularly exhibited throughout his career. It was included in the annual exhibitions at Atlanta University between 1946 and 1969 and was featured in solo exhibitions at several Black colleges. Although local reviews of his exhibitions were lavish with praise, Oubre's art has not been widely recognized. To begin the process of reintroducing Oubre to a broader public, Steve Turner Contemporary presented its first exhibition of Oubre's work in 2008 as a prelude to the traveling museum exhibition which will open in late 2010 at the Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina.
Family, c. 1949
Oil on canvas
46 x 18 1/4 inches
Untitled, c. 1949
Oil on canvas
40 1/4 x 24 inches
Still Life with Blue Vase, c. 1949
Oil on canvas
39 1/4 x 28 inches
Self Portrait, 1948
Etching
18 1/4 x 12 inches
The Big Bang, c. 1960
Oil on canvas
16 3/8 x 26 1/4 inches
Manikins, c. 1967
Oil on canvas
24 x 20 inches
Crescendo , c. 1967
Wire sculpture
64 x 24 1/2 x 23 3/4 inches
Eternal Flame, c. 1960
Wire sculpture
43 1/2 x 23 1/2 x 14 3/4 inches
Space Rhythms, c. 1960
Wire sculpture
42 x 20 3/4 x 22 1/2 inches
Untitled, c. 1960
Wire sculpture
53 1/4 x 34 1/2 x 12 1/4 inches
Eternal Woman, c. 1957
Plaster sculpture
29 1/4 x 9 3/8 x 8 3/8 inches
Untitled, c. 1955
wood sculpture
29 3/8 x 9 3/8 x 6 1/2 inches
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