Perspectives: Letitia Huckaby

Letitia Huckaby

Quilted Legacies Along Highway 19

By Alexandra Kennon

Though Letitia Huckaby was born in Augsburg, Germany, her childhood memories of visiting family in rural Louisiana and Mississippi are the ones that most profoundly impact her quilted photographic art. “I think that transition [from Germany to Louisiana], that shock, really made an impression on me as a kid, and I just sort of grabbed onto it: the the colors, the sort of smell, the way people talk,” Huckaby told me over the phone from her home in Texas, which she shares with her husband, artist Sedrick Huckaby, and their three children Rising Sun, Halle Lujah, and Rhema Rain. “I feel like all of that really influences my work whether it’s about Louisiana or not.” Huckaby has vivid memories of particular images from the long, dirt road leading to her grandmother’s house in the Clinton/Wilson area: the white goat in the field, the oak draped in Spanish moss in the junkyard.

Huckaby’s mother was one of eleven siblings, and the artist affectionately describes her maternal grandmother’s property as “kind of like a commune,” with family all around: her grandmother’s mother next door, and her sister next door to her. “You pulled in, and everyone there was family,” Huckaby told me. “And so it always had a sense of family reunion when you went there.” At the core of that large family was Huckaby’s maternal grandmother, who graces her 2010 work “East Feliciana Alterpiece”. “She’s really the center of everything, as far as my experiences going back home and being in the country,” Huckaby told me.

Moving around frequently as a “third culture child” of a high-ranking military officer, Louisiana always felt like the place Huckaby was from. As a child in Germany, Huckaby absorbed the impact of historic master works from wood carvings to sacred paintings of saints; imagery she utilizes to depict her own family lineage and story. “It’s what’s influencing me in the creation of the work,” Huckaby explained. “I’m thinking about experiences in Germany, I’m thinking about experiences in the deep South, I’m thinking about my faith, and scripture. And, you know, I’m thinking about what’s going on in the news and current contemporary times and all of that sort of quilts together, I guess, to form whatever I’m trying to create.”

With degrees in both journalism and photography, Huckaby considers herself “a photographer at heart,” as most of her artworks begin with a photographic image. Her early work was photojournalistic; not until the death of her father did her inspiration turn inward to her own family history and African American heritage.

Huckaby began utilizing fabrics in her artwork after her father passed away. He was an only child from Greenwood, Mississippi, which at one point was a major producer of cotton. He was ranked second in command on the base he lived on with his family, largely insulating Huckaby from race issues as she grew up. “Nobody was really gonna mess with me, you know,” Huckaby recalled. “I kind of grew up not thinking about those things.” After his passing, she began to more closely consider where he was from: “[His mother] lived in this neighborhood that was surrounded on three sides by cotton fields, and the way her side of town lived was drastically different than the other side of town.” Motivated by the emotion of losing her father, Huckaby began photographing the cotton plant itself, “as if it was a rose, something precious,” and printing it directly onto fabric. Her paternal grandmother was a seamstress with a large collection of heirloom fabrics, some passed down from her mother, whom Huckaby never met. “Then I printed an image on it, and for me it felt like a conversation across generations, through art,” Huckaby explained.

She is also drawn to how relatable fabric is; how universally nostalgic. Regardless of background, nearly everyone has some quilt or piece of embroidery that has been passed down through generations. “So I get a lot of people when they see the work, they’ll start telling me stories about their family,” Huckaby told me. “And I love that. I love that fabric does that for people, in that they get it right away.”

As for the practicality of printing photographs onto fabric, it took a bit of work to determine that an Epson printer with fabric designed specifically to be printed on was the best route—with the fewest electronic casualties. “With the vintage pieces, I used to just take the seams apart and print directly onto, let’s say, like a flower sack or sugar sack,” Huckaby recalled. “And I have destroyed a number of printers,” she told me with a laugh. Most of the photographs she prints onto fabrics require around eight layers, building the value from light to dark.

The nature of a quilt—of humble pieces collectively elevated by craftsmanship and intent to the status of heirloom—sits strongly with Huckaby. “When a woman makes a quilt, she takes the scraps or things that people might think should be thrown away, and sews those together to create something beautiful,” Huckaby said. “I feel like sometimes people of color, people of less means, can be seen as disposable. And what I’m doing in the work is trying to show the beauty in the culture where I’m from, the culture that helped me be who I am today.”

Letitia Huckaby’s exhibition This Same Dusty Road is currently on display at the LSU Museum of Art until March 14, 2021 and her exhibition Black Nature is currently on display at the Hilliard Museum until July 10, 2021.

Letiticia Huckaby. “East Feliciana Alterpiece,” 2010, pigment print on silk, 46 x 144.

Courtesy of the artist