The Roux Collective Flaunts Serious Female Badassery in Print Making

Salon Talk: Black Woman Artists: Past, Present, Future kicks off Black Fine Art Month

“No good gumbo starts without a good roux.” This according to the Roux Collective, a group of four female artists in the Houston area who continue to break boundaries as their city’s first collective of Black female printmakers.

Their Salon Talk was the kickoff to Black Fine Art Month 2020, the second annual celebration of Black fine art founded by Pigment International in partnership with the DuSable Museum of African American History, a Smithsonian affiliate. The panel, featuring Ann “Sole Sister” Johnson, Rabéa Ballin, Delita Martin and Lovie Olivia, was produced by Janice Bond, Deputy Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Houston. The common thread throughout their Salon Talk was the comradery and sisterhood the group shares, and how together they are helping change the art landscape in their city that includes their ‘artivism’ in changing the status quo for Black Americans.

In their words:

Rabéa Ballin — “We have that responsibility of telling truth, our own truth. For that reason, it’s very important to make work (art) during this time, it doesn’t have to be political, but it still will be because we’re making it.

Lovie Olivia — “What have I always gone to, religiously, every time I feel low has been creativity, through some medium. That is especially true now because museums are closed, and people can’t access art as they would have. People are looking for something that is right, that is brilliant, that captures their attention. The world wants to know what Roux is doing.”

Delita Martin — “Artists are inherently doers; I believe that artists are the people who will ultimately capture the feelings of this time. And if you didn’t know the value of art or arts teachers before this year, now you do.”

Ann Johnson — “Part of our legacy is that we come together, we don’t have girl fights, we don’t do ‘hateration’. We kicked the door down in terms of what we do. There was not a Black female presence in printmaking and now there is.”