THE GOOD EARTH

Senga Nengudi's journeys through air, water, and sand.

- HILTON ALS

It must have been in the fall of 2011 that I first saw the great Senga Nengudi's work. That was when the art historian and curator Kellie Jones unveiled her landmark exhibition "Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980" at L.A.'s Hammer Museum. An extensive and enriching display, the show included pieces by a phenomenal range of creators, among them Nengudi, John Outterbridge, Suzanne Jackson, Maren Hassinger, David Hammons, Betye Saar, Alonzo Davis, and Houston Conwillartists who helped define a time and a place that their East Coast contemporaries knew little, if anything, about. Walking into the show was like entering a new atmosphere, especially if you primarily associated the two decades that Jones was exploring with Pop art and minimalism and the few "stars" of those movements. The artists represented in Jones's powerful "other" world operated out of what I now see as a sort of spiritual necessity, a desire to use their materials-paint, wood, wire rope, what have you-to communicate the complexities of their inner view.