Willie Birch
The visual art of Willie Birch tells the story of New Orleans and reveals the experience of African-Americans. Born in New Orleans in 1942, Birch received his MFA from the Maryland Institute, College of Art, in Baltimore. After twenty years in New York's artistic community, Birch moved back home to New Orleans in the 1990s. Across charcoal, painting, papier-mache, and mixed media sculptures, Birch's work captures figures from his own life, and the life of his community: Mardi Gras festivities, Martin Luther King Day celebrations, Sunday lives, and jazz funerals. Birch's work has been exhibited across the country, and is in the permanent collections of the Met in New York, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
