Director of Art Exhibitions and Middle School art teacher Aaron Brophy explains the unique connection across generations between alum artist Sonya Clark ’85 and his current students.

“Each year, my students study the work of Sonya Clark ’85. As a Sidwell Friends alum, the 2021 retrospective Tatter, Bristle, Mend at the National Museum for Women in the Arts was a homecoming for Clark. Exploring issues of identity, equity, and social justice, Clark’s fluency with delicate sculptural materials, fiber, found objects, and human hair, add conceptual layers to the visual experience of museum visitors. One sculpture stopped me in my tracks. Octoroon, a larger-than-life-size flag piece, refers to the legacy of the U.S. racial classification system under Jim Crow laws. Today, Octoroon can be seen at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in the exhibition The Shape of Power. The show deftly explores the history of sculpture and race in the United States.  

Clark’s Solidarity Book Project, a partnership with Amherst College, where Clark is a professor, celebrates the power of art to change the world. Clark models how reflections, readings, and art can make a material difference to Black and Indigenous communities. After watching several videos, listening to interviews, and reading a catalog about Sonya Clark, I encourage my students to emulate her artwork. Students are free to seek, find, and choose one of her pieces. Clark’s hair, cloth, and paper-based sculptures are often interpreted two-dimensionally 
by my students. However, some ambitious Sidwell art students have taken on the challenge of Clark’s three-dimensional work. 

This year, several students were drawn to the Solidarity Book Project. Students selected their books with thoughtful intention. For her sculpture, Ishani Agrawal ’28 chose The Help by Kathryn Stockett, and Alex Bess ’29 decided to use Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. Fittingly, these books address issues of race, gender, and class. With every passing semester, Sonya Clark inspires the next generation of Sidwell Friends students, emphasizing the relationship between form and function, image and text, body and soul.”