Grambling State University’s Cash Street Café is hosting an exhibition of artworks by Simsboro native De Shadrick “Tae” Talbert through April 29.Each art major at GSU develops a proposal in their junior year that helps to focus the work they produce during their junior and senior years. During the senior year the works are submitted for jury by a faculty panel and the best works by each student are chosen to be included in the senior exhibition.
Talbert has been interested in art since he was a small child. He has early memories of drawing every day and often got in trouble for drawing in class at school.
Talbert’s work explores the symbolic use of color and limited values that are constricted to shapes and planes to describe the form of his subjects. Some of the portraits are of friends and relatives. Some of the work portray distinguished African Americans.
“I want to portray people who have had a strong influence on society or on me personally,” said Talbert.
He uses the computer to simplify values and manipulate photographs. He then creates drawings that use structural lines to establish the relationship of one part of the figure to another.
“Each painting is done using colors that for me symbolize some aspect of the subject’s personality or accomplishments,” according to Talbert,
The finished image is a symbolic but somewhat realistic portrait of the subject. For this reason Talbert labels his work as “Symbolic Realism.”
Cash Street Café is located on Robinson Street at the back of McCall Dining Hall. Café hours are 11 a.m. – 2 p.m., Monday through Friday. Accommodations are available for people with special needs.
For more information, call (318) 274-2274.