Composition is a process not limited to sound and music. It extends to all disciplines of art. It embodies making…collecting…curating…remembering. It takes on the act of memorializing, even if the original form is no longer. Its energy carries on, rebirthing through its next generation.

One particular legacy of renowned sculptor, teacher and Civil Rights champion Augusta Savage, is a prodigious commission that now exists in only in photographs and other documented remembrances. My late father, William Edwards would regale our family with stories about his visit to the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and his particular fascination with the artist’s 16-foot tall visual opus, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" (also known as “The Harp,”) inspired by James Weldon and Rosamond Johnson's Black National Anthem of the same name. Augusta Savage’s own influence has cycled through generations of artists and audiences, and it seems that she is having a renaissance on this early 21st Century cultural horizon of inclusion and representation in monument.

On this episode of NOTES BETWEEN SESSIONS, I talk with Tammi Lawson, Curator of the Art and Artifacts Division of The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. This Division of The New York Public Library houses a significant collection of Augusta Savage’s papers and works, which also galvanized Ms. Lawson to collaborate with Marilyn Nelson, poet Laureate of CT, on a children’s book about Augusta Savage’s studio and home that is now a National landmark. Tammi Lawson takes us full circle, from discovering the Schomburg in our early college days, and her continued journey with others through and towards understanding Augusta Savage’s shaping of a life.

EPISODE 7 - AUGUSTA SAVAGE…THE SHAPE OF A LIFE: TAMMI LAWSON

Notes Between Sessions with Mary EdwardsBy Mary EdwardsNov 11, 2020