Those of you who have seen artist Loring Cornish’s magnificently decorated home and studio at 2714 Parkwood Avenue can imagine the impact of a gallery filled with his sculptures. Now on view at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, Loring’s exhibition In Each Other’s Shoes is a meditation on the struggles of the African-American and Jewish communities against intolerance and hatred—and how this African-American artist was inspired to explore their commonalities through his friendship with a Jewish couple.
A Hanging in the Ghetto responds to the exclusion experienced by both communities. “Ghetto. This was my word. I didn’t know I borrowed it from [the Jewish community],” Loring explained in a recent gallery talk. “You are assigned to this area and that’s where you are meant to stay, to live, and to work.” On one side the word Ghetto is written backwards, a reference to Hebrew being read from left to right; on the other, three lynched figures hang from nooses.
Photograph by Noelle Wigginton
Rising more than 10 feet in the air, Just Words spells out a series of words, made from cast-aside, elegant metal pieces. If you look closely, you can pick out the letters that form slavery, Negro, hang, hate, and Holocaust, and then, more optimistically, diversity, hope, love, and respect.
Bodies/Souls Awaiting Justice greets us with a glistening field of glass beads, representing souls. “Each bead [references]… the lives lost during slavery and the holocaust; thousands of people lost the beauty of their lives,” Loring said. On its reverse, we are confronted with symbols of their bodies—mounds of quilted brown leather that could represent Africans crowded in the miserable holds of slave ships or Jews murdered and left in mass graves. Like other works in the show, Bodies/Souls is supported by a wrought iron stand crafted by Rashaud Williams.
Photograph by Will Kirk, Courtesy of the Jewish Museum of Maryland
Montgomery Bus Boycott is made from castoff shoes, boots, and sneakers flattened, arranged to create a textured field, and then sprinkled with red soil and dust. It commemorates a 1955 protest, when for more than a year African-Americans refused to take the city’s buses. For me, it also recalled the chilling installation of shoes from the Jewish victims of the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Photograph by Will Kirk, Courtesy of the Jewish Museum of Maryland
Go see the exhibition, on view until July 17. While there, call 410-202-3015 from your cell phone to hear Loring in the Museum’s audio tour.
Doreen Bolger is always on the move because she can’t stop seeing, supporting, and writing about the arts in and around Baltimore City. Her lengthy love affair for the arts began in Long Island when her father, an executive in the textile industry, brought home breathtaking fabrics every night from the heart of the garment district. 