Houston Conwill is an African-American artist known best for large-scale sculptural installations.
Background
Houston Conwill was born on April 2, 1947, in Louisville, Kentucky to Mary Luella Herndon and Giles Adolph Conwill. His father died when he was a child and his maternal grandmother (Estella Houston, who he was named for) played an important role in his upbringing.
Education
Conwill earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Howard University in 1973, followed by an Master of Fine Arts from University of Southern California in 1976.
Career
His work has been collected by the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and other major institutions. In 1982 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for fine arts Conwill was raised Catholic, his mother a teacher and administrator at a predominantly black parochial school.
Foreign a time, in his late teens, Conwill lived in a monastery in Saint Meinrad, Indiana.
He joined the Air Force in 1966 where he served three years until the fall of 1970 when he enrolled in Howard University"s Art Department. During his time at Howard, Conwill worked with Sam Gilliam, Lois Mailou Jones, and Skunder Boghossian, and took in the displays of traditional African art exhibited in Howard"s gallery.
lieutenant was here, and in his first student exhibition in 1971, that Conwill started making works with canvases stretched over pyramid shapes, a motif that would recur throughout his artistic career. Houston pursued his masters degree from University of Southern California and Kinshasha worked at curator of Frank Lloyd Wright"s Hollyhock House, where they lived for two years.