James Brown, Jr
American, b. 1939
Person TypeArtist
BiographyJames Brown, Jr. was born in Harlem in 1939. He traveled annually to his family farm in Florida, located in an African village hidden away in the Ocala forest. The land was part of the homestead of his great-grandfather, an African who had escaped from slavery in South Carolina. In 1958, Brown’s art education began at the Art Students League, and for the following ten years he attended the School of Visual Arts. In 1984, Brown received a BFA from the University of South Florida, and in 1987 he earned an MFA from Howard University. Brown’s creative process changed drastically after his MFA experience, from watercolors to textile/fibers. Both of his parents worked with textiles, from upholstery fabrics to lace and silks. Brown uses techniques of stitching, embroidery, silk painting, appliquéing strips and felting, both wet and needle. Brown’s textiles have been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution’s annual Folk Life Festival, Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, The Arts Club of Washington, and the traveling exhibition Through the Needle’s Eye, with the Embroiderer’s Guild of America. In 2012-13, Brown was selected as one of ten Washington, DC, artists to participate in Art Cart: Saving the Legacy, a project of the Research Center for Arts and Culture.