After completing a master of public health degree at Columbia University and working as a public health educator in East Orange, New Jersey, for over a decade, Beverly Buchanan decided that she “wanted to try to be an artist, not a doctor who paints.” Despite this significant professional transition, Buchanan’s commitment to questions of human and public history remained constant.
Buchanan’s fascination with natural materials was molded by her rural upbringing in the South. She recalls that she “would do drawings in the dirt.[...] Sticks were our pencils.” Buchanan grew up in Orangeburg, on the South Carolina State College campus, where her father was dean of the School of Agriculture. In childhood, Buchanan often found herself exploring the campus—making use of chemistry labs and carpentry shop tools. There, Buchanan honed her eye for architectural forms and learned to build small house structures.
In 1971, Buchanan began studying under Norman Lewis at the Arts Student League in New York, making paintings inspired by Abstract Expressionism. Through Lewis, she was introduced to Romare Bearden, who exhibited Buchanan’s paintings and drawings at Cinque Gallery, a space he founded with an “open door” policy for African American artists. Working between New Jersey and New York City, Buchanan became influenced by the urban landscape, exploring “the concept of urban walls when they are in various stages of decay,” as seen in her 1977 Wall Paintings (City Wall Paintings) series of abstract acrylic paintings.
In 1978, Buchanan’s interest in fabricating worn wall surfaces evolved from two dimensions to three, resulting in Wall Fragments (Frustulum), her earliest experiments with concrete. In 1980, Buchanan received a Guggenheim Fellowship to create a large-scale public artwork in Brunswick, Georgia, Marsh Ruins—a collection of several masses of cement arranged on Marshes of Glynn.
In 1983, Buchanan relocated to Macon, Georgia, where she taught at Stratford Academy until 1985. Her return to the South sparked a new series of small sculptures resembling the handmade shacks she saw in Georgia and North Carolina. Buchanan spent a greater part of the 1990s photographing shacks, in works such as Red Creek Barbecue (c. 1990–2005) and Mary Lou Furcron House With Lady #31 (1994). Buchanan also began making oil pastel drawings of shacks she’d seen and photographed, often using a hurried, scribbly technique to fill in the outlines of her shack sketches. In Dataw Island, S.C. Buchanan recreates four shacks of various colors and designs, drawing attention to the individuality of the designs of handmade Southern architecture. Buchanan said that her fascination with shacks was grounded in a curiosity about the individuals who built them. “I would look at shacks and the ones that attracted me always had something a little different or odd about them. This evolved into my having to deal with [the fact that] I’m making portraits of a family or person.”
Taylor Ndiaye, MoMA/Studio Museum Fellow, 2024
