Casey Kaplan
How Berkeley’s Countercultural Movement Shaped Artist David Huffman
Afro Hippie examines Huffman’s time at Berkeley and how it continues to influence him today.
Emily Wilson | October 3, 2021
BERKELEY, Calif. — Artist David Huffman grew up in Berkeley, California in the 1960s and ’70s, and the countercultural ideas all around him influenced his work. In his solo show at the Berkeley Art Center, Afro Hippie, he examines that experience.
Huffman’s mother, Dolores Davis, an activist and artist, was involved with the Black Panther Party. A replica of her design of the Free Huey flag (for Huey Newton, who co-founded the party with Bobby Seale) hangs on a wall of the show, and a photo shows Huffman and his brothers as little boys with Seale. Davis was also a spiritualist who believed in pyramid power. Afro Hippie has a 10-foot-tall pyramid covered in tin foil, like one in the living room of Huffman’s childhood home. As in his mother’s house, there’s a raw egg inside, meant to test the pyramid’s energies. Along with this “Cosmic Pyramid” (2021), there are five small, colorful acrylics of pyramid silhouettes hanging on the wall. Some of the art on display has never been seen before, like the four figurative Psychic Portraits (2008-9), which the artist says come from his interest in early African sculptures that have worn away with age.
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