Lonnie Graham facts for kids

Lonnie Graham is an American artist who uses photography, art installations, and teaching to show how art can make a real difference in people's lives. He is a professor of visual art at Pennsylvania State University. Since 2019, he has also been the executive director of PhotoAlliance in San Francisco. In 2013, Lonnie Graham gave a talk at a TEDx event at Penn State, which you can watch online.

Early Life and Learning

Lonnie Graham first studied graphic design and commercial photography in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1976, he learned fine art photography and drawing at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Canada. There, he had special lessons with famous photographer Robert Frank.

In 1977, he went to the San Francisco Art Institute. He learned from artists like Linda Connor and Henry Wessel. He also worked as an assistant to Larry Sultan and John Collier Jr., who studied how people use visuals. Lonnie Graham also learned about large format photography from Pirkle Jones, a close friend of Ansel Adams.

Career Highlights

From 1990 to 1997, Lonnie Graham was the director of photography at Manchester Craftsmen's Guild in Pittsburgh. This group helps young people through art and education. Graham started new programs, like the Arts Collaborative, which mixed art with school subjects. This program was so good that First Lady Hillary Clinton visited it. She called it a national example for art education.

Professor Graham also helped choose projects for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He did similar work for the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C.

From 2001 to 2003, he taught graduate students at the San Francisco Art Institute. In 2002, he was asked to record the history of the Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania. He taught special programs there until 2007. From 2007 to 2009, Graham was the acting associate director of the Fabric Workshop and Museum.

How Lonnie Graham Inspired Others

Lonnie Graham has inspired many students. One student, Jeremy Dennis, is a Native American artist. He uses his art to talk about diversity and being fair to everyone. He works on his native land in New York, exploring old stories and myths. Dennis uses his art to help people understand how their actions affect others. He encourages everyone to respect different cultures.

Another student, Brian Gaither, took Graham's ideas back to his hometown of Pittsburgh. He uses art to connect people in his community. He focuses on issues about race.

Corrina Mehiel, another student, worked with Graham in his "Art and Social Activism" class. She later became a director of a nonprofit group. She taught in Cincinnati and worked as a community organizer in India. Before she passed away in 2017, she worked with artist Mel Chin. They worked to make sure elementary schools had lead-free drinking water.

Trips to Africa and Asia

Starting in 2003, Lonnie Graham began art trips to India, Ethiopia, and Iceland with photographer Linda Connor. In 2007, he traveled with Jack Fulton to India, Nepal, and Tibet.

Graham also took other trips to Africa and Asia. These trips were for art and cultural projects. He wanted to show that art could solve common problems and make big changes in people's lives.

Special Art Projects

In 1997, Lonnie Graham received a major art job from the Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh. This was for his "African/American Garden Project." It was part of a bigger art show called "Points of Entry."

The African/American Garden project helped connect single mothers from Pittsburgh with farmers from a small village in Muguga, Kenya. They shared ideas about farming and culture. Because of this project, Graham built several urban gardens where people could grow their own food.

In 2001, Lonnie Graham was invited to the Spoleto Arts Festival in South Carolina. He showed his "Heritage Garden Project." Since he had visited traditional cultures in Africa and Asia, he created bigger projects. These projects involved many artists and community members. The goal was for modern artists to work in traditional ways, helping meet a community's basic needs.

From 2000 to 2010, Graham worked in Philadelphia on a project for Project H.O.M.E. This project was for a neighborhood in north Philadelphia. Besides art installations and events, they created a peaceful park. This park was given to the community in 2010.

In 1997, Lonnie Graham also got a special job to travel to Papua New Guinea. He documented how the Maisen tribe harvested the Woowoosi tree. This tree is used to make special ceremonial tapa cloth. Later, he worked with curator Lawrence Rinder on an art show of his photos and items from that trip.

Awards and Recognitions

In 1995, Lonnie Graham was mentioned in the Colliers Encyclopedia yearbook. This was for his research and art in installation art. He also received a travel grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pew Charitable Trust to travel to Ghana.

Graham has won the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship four times. He has also been nominated for other important art awards. The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust gave him the Creative Achievement Award. He also received a Pew Fellowships in the Arts, which is one of the biggest art awards for individual artists in the United States. In 2005, he won the Hazlett Memorial Award. He was named Artist of the Year in Pennsylvania and received the Governor's Award from Governor Edward Rendell.

Art Books and Exhibitions

Lonnie Graham designed the book "Countdown to Eternity." This book has photographs of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by Benedict Fernandez. He also designed the book for Carrie Mae Weems’ "Kitchen Table Series." He worked with Carrie Mae Weems on other projects too, like an art screen called "Apple of Adam's Eye" in 1992.

He also worked with David Lewis to create a book about sculptor Thaddeus Mosley. A publisher called Pyramid Atlantic Art Center published Graham's own book, "Friendship, Strength and Vitality." This was a special limited edition book. Copies of it are in the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Schomberg Center in New York City.

A Conversation with the World

A book for the art show "A Conversation with the World" has been shared widely. Lonnie Graham and photographer Kevin Martin came up with this project in 1986. It mixes social studies with fine art. People sit for a large portrait, and Graham interviews them. This project captures detailed and personal pictures of people from different cultures and places.

Each person has a special conversation. This helps to find out about their life stories, what they value, and their thoughts on humanity. This way, the audience can connect directly with the person in the photo. The pictures and parts of the interviews show how each person is unique. They also show common ideas like family, traditions, hopes, and fears. This helps people understand and feel for others from different cultures.

Graham used this process in Houston, Texas, and San Francisco. The San Francisco Art Commission asked him to create a public art project. It was shown at the San Francisco City Hall and in other public places. This project was also shown in Calgary, Canada; Eatonville, Florida; and Oulu, Finland.

In 2005, he received a grant to create "A Conversation at the Table." This project brought together over 50 artists and four art groups. They worked together on a project about important parts of being human. This project was finished and shown in 2006.

Other Art Projects

The Queens Museum in New York asked Lonnie Graham to create an international garden project in 2005. Lonnie starts all his garden projects hoping they will keep going on their own. But his work has a much bigger impact.

For example, his "Enlightenment" garden helped change how students, teachers, and parents worked together. Gardening needs teamwork and talking. The garden gave the community a sense of responsibility and respect for others. By growing vegetables, children also learned about life and how delicate it is.

His work also brings communities together, even across countries. For example, his "Uncle Floyd's project" brought people from Kenya to Homewood, Pittsburgh, to meet gardeners. And people from Homewood traveled to Kenya to help with village gardening. His gardens connect different places and cultures. Whenever he can, he tries to pair up two "sister" countries. The Queens Museum garden, "Jardines Gamelos de las Americas," connected Queens, New York, and Mexico. He believes that real-life experiences teach us how other cultures live.

Lonnie Graham has also shown his photos at the Goethe Institute in Accra, Ghana. A museum in Paris, France, made a full-size copy of one of the educational galleries he photographed for the Barnes Foundation. Graham has shown his work at the Toyota City Museum in Aichi, Japan. He also had a room-sized art installation at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Lonnie Graham's art is part of the permanent collections at the Addison Gallery for American Art in Andover, Massachusetts, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In 2005, he worked with MacArthur Fellow Deborah Willis on "Framing the Diaspora." This led to an international meeting of artists, photographers, and filmmakers in Accra, Ghana.

Specific Art Installations

• My Fathers Table (1995): This is a fully furnished room, 9 feet by 12 feet. It has original items from Graham's home. The main part is a handmade book called "Strength, Vitality, and Friendship." It is made from materials from East Africa. The large paper sheets are made to fall apart, showing how a father's memory can fade.
• Farm Stand (2012): This is a fully stocked farm store, 8 feet by 8 feet by 10 feet. It was created with John Stone as a memorial for an art show.
• Acknowledgment and Reflection (2003): This is a 10-foot by 10-foot room made to look like slave quarters. Visitors can sit at a desk and think about the contributions of Black people to Western culture. They can write their thoughts in a journal. From the window, they can look into the dining room of the "Big House."
• Project H.O.M.E. (2009): This project was created in north Philadelphia based on ideas from the community. It was a team effort with John Stone and Lorene Cary.
• Living in a Spirit House (1993): This is a 9-foot by 9-foot fully furnished room or art installation. It has original items from the artist's home, along with copied old fabrics and wallpapers. It was shown at the Smithsonian Institution.
• Acknowledgement, Enlightenment, and Memorialization (2003): This was a three-part art installation. One part was a large garden that helped the Wilmot Frasier Elementary School. It provided food for the students, which helped improve their test scores and kept the school open. The garden also worked as an outdoor classroom for English, science, and math lessons.
• Acknowledgement (2003): This was the second part of the three-part installation. It was a 14-foot by 30-foot room with pictures of Africans projected onto the walls. It was built to recognize the hard work of enslaved African-Americans who built and cared for many parts of the United States. This part of the art show was taken down after only three days because some staff found it "disturbing."
• Memorialization (2003): This was the third part of the installation. It was an open field with sticks, created with sculptor Thaddeus Mosley. It was a memorial for the many Africans and Americans buried in unmarked graves at the site. A dedication ceremony was held, and a woman sang spiritual songs. Surviving family members of the plantation owners and the enslaved people met and found peace together.