Vinnie Bagwell facts for kids

Vinnie Bagwell is an American artist who creates amazing sculptures. She is known for making statues that look like real people, often showing important figures and stories from history.

About Vinnie Bagwell

Vinnie Bagwell was born and still lives in Yonkers, New York. She grew up in a part of Yonkers called Greenburgh. Vinnie loved art from a young age and started painting when she was in high school. She taught herself how to sculpt in 1993. Since then, she has won many awards and has been asked by cities and towns across the United States to create art for them. In 1996, she got her first big project from the city of Yonkers. It was for her sculpture called The First Lady of Jazz.

Her Art and What It Means

Vinnie Bagwell is famous for her many sculptures that tell social stories and show real people. She often uses bronze or a material called bronze resin for her sculptures. These materials are her favorite to work with.

Her art often focuses on important African American people and the difficult experiences of enslaved people. These were people who were taken from their homes and forced to work for others. Vinnie's main goal as an artist is to help people understand the struggles these individuals faced. She hopes that her art will help everyone truly understand what these people gave up and what was taken from them.

The Enslaved Africans' Raingarden Project

The Enslaved Africans' Raingarden is one of Vinnie Bagwell's largest and most important projects. This project includes five sculptures. Each sculpture shows a different person who was among the first enslaved people to be set free by law. This happened even before the Emancipation Proclamation, which officially ended slavery in many parts of the U.S.

Each sculpture tells the story of a unique individual. This whole project took 12 years to complete and was finished in 2020. You can see all five sculptures at the Yonkers Riverfront Library in Yonkers, New York.

The sculptures are named:

• I'Satta
• Themba
• Bibi
• Sola & Olumide

The Victory Beyond Sims Sculpture

Victory Beyond Sims is a sculpture Vinnie Bagwell plans to create. It will replace a statue of J. Marion Sims that was removed from Central Park in New York City in 2018. After the old statue was taken down, the city asked artists to propose new sculptures. Vinnie Bagwell was one of four artists chosen as finalists.

The city committee eventually chose another artist, Simone Leigh. However, many people in the community felt that Vinnie Bagwell should have won. Simone Leigh heard about this strong support for Vinnie. She decided to step back from the project so that Vinnie could create the sculpture instead. Simone Leigh said she understood that the community really wanted Vinnie's artwork for their neighborhood.

This new statue is planned to be put in place in 2021, after all the approvals are finished.

Awards and Honors

Vinnie Bagwell has received several important awards for her work:

• In October 2020, she won the first-ever Jorge and Darlene Pérez Prize in Public Art & Civic Design from Americans for the Arts. This award recognized her ongoing work in creating art and supporting her community. She also received $30,000 and chances to learn from other famous artists.
• On April 1, 2021, ArtsWestchester gave Vinnie Bagwell their annual Artist award. She earned this honor because of her amazing work on the Enslaved Africans' Raingarden project in Yonkers.
• In 2017, the African American Advisory Board of Westchester County gave Vinnie Bagwell a Trailblazers Award.