Haywood L. Oubre: wired - the sculptor, not the magazine - belated recognition comes to innovative sculptor, now in his 80s

"Hollow Yes Man!" exclaims artist Hayward L. Oubre, sprinting to the wire sculpture that he created in 1965 in response to a messy clash with his employers that he's about to describe. Animated and intense, he thrusts his hand into the hole where the mouth should be and says, "This is nothing but a hollow; it's yellow.... [The sculpture] is black because all of the people involved were black. You have no arms, you have no legs, because power says, `Come to me and I'm going to tell you off.' I finished this when I came here. My hands were bleeding. He has no heart: hot air. No guts: hot air.

"The president calls the dean and tells the dean to write a damn letter. I know it came from the president. I write my resignation to the president. `Hollow Yes Man' because power dictates what you do.... Power uses you like toilet paper and throws you away. I don't let people do that to me. `Hollow Yes Man.' What he's telling you is only what somebody at the top has to say.

"He couldn't see that I could be a free thinker, that I didn't get involved and bow down to power. I don't get with power. `Hollow Yes Man.' This is the attitude that power has. This doesn't represent any man. It represents power humiliating you."

"Hollow Yes Man," an abstract, futuristic piece with yellow gaping holes, is the result of a convoluted dispute that Oubre had with his employers at Alabama State College, which culminated in his departure and a new job at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina in 1966. The episode points to a reason why Oubre's talent has gone largely unrecognized.

Juan Logan, a Baltimore-based painter and sculptor, met Oubre 20 years ago at Winston-Salem State, where Logan was exhibiting. "I think what happened with Hayward over the years," Logan says, "at least early on, is that he elected not to be a willing participant in the process. And that process ... is the promotion of, the development of, one's work as an artist. A lot of people did not have the opportunity to be exposed to his work. And while we've all always known about Hayward's work, it never received the exposure I think it deserved."

Logan points out that racism in the 1940s and `50s--when Oubre's career in the arts began--cast a shadow over the art world, but prejudice was not solely responsible for Oubre's lack of exposure. His contempt for power has not helped his artistic career.

"That's a Catch-22 situation," Logan says. "You don't want to deal with the power, but at the same time, you can't get what you want if you don't deal with the power. That's the reality. Like it or not, the reality is that we all play some political game in this arena.

"You can't receive the critical acclaim--in other words, have truly critical writing take place about your work--unless it is out there, to be seen. And for years, he didn't have it out there."

Ken Bloom, a curator and art consultant, adds: "It's true that he doesn't like playing the game. It's true that at the time he was coming up, it would have been extremely difficult for anyone to have become recognized, especially if they were as uncompromising as Oubre."

Hayward Oubre, a mentally and physically fit octogenarian and widower, lives in a shrine to himself. It's an appropriate place for a man who doesn't hesitate to proclaim that his art should rest in major museums, above the works of Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence.

Here in the middle of a room in his Winston-Salem home, for example, is a life-size colt. "Young Horse," completed in 1958, rises from its wooden base like some archetype poised to give credence to Jung's collective unconscious. Its hoofs, mane, tail and flank are constructed of intricately woven wire. The sculpture appears--indeed, feels--sturdy enough to support a small child. But where there could be more wire, there's space. This is not stone or wood or bronze, and the absence of substance is what gives it substance. Light and air are as integral to the work as the metal that gives it definition.

If Oubre's wire sculptures were to come to life, their personalities would undoubtedly mirror their creator's. The fat owl that occupies a prominent place on the table in front of Oubre's living room window might be the one who carries on about race relations and Gestalt psychology. The rooster defiantly poised on the opposite corner of the same table might expound on the relationship of art and athletics. "The Prophet," a 5-foot 11-inch robed figure that guards the front door, might be the one to explain the difference between religion and spirituality, with the latter being the most important.

Bloom, who curated Oubre's last one-man show in 1993 at the Spirit Square Gallery in Charlotte, N.C., finds Oubre's sculpture intriguing. "It represents both his engineering ability and his iconography," Bloom says. "He uses a lot of religious themes.... The African head, the Moses figure, the face of Jesus, the Greek chorus--they're all a sort of high-minded symbolism. But they're not pretentious at all. They're wonderfully organic.

"One of the things we did in the show," Bloom explains, "was to post some of his drawings around his sculptures and then light the sculptures to project a shadow onto the wall. And a lot of his pieces actually looked like the lines in his drawings. There's a lot of consistency in the form of his lines. That's extraordinarily difficult to maintain."

Behind "The Young Horse" lie more of these incredible creations, as varied in genre as Oubre's paintings, collages and drawings that decorate the walls. There's "Startled Woman," a multicolored wire abstract that Oubre likes to shake to show how a woman startled would behave. And there's the tall "Topless No More," a woman wearing a blue bra and nothing else. It is a realistic tribute to a waitress at a topless bar who, to protest a local ordinance outlawing toplessness, donned a bra and shed everything else.

Oubre, the retired chairman of the art department at Winston-Salem State University, has reaped a dozen honors and has been shown in nearly 50 exhibits. His etchings were part of last year's traveling exhibit "Alone in a Crowd," a collection of famous African-American artists that included Bearden, Charles White and John Wilson.

Oubre was born in 1916 in New Orleans, the youngest of three siblings. He was Dillard University's first art major, graduating during the Depression, when there were few opportunities for a black man with a degree in art. A fellow Dillard graduate suggested that Oubre enroll at Atlanta University, where the climate would likely be more hospitable for a young, gifted and black art major.

"Atlanta was one of the best experiences I ever had, because I had two great teachers," Oubre says, adding that the teachers were the main reasons he enrolled, because the school didn't offer a graduate degree in art.

Painter Hale Woodruff and sculptor Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, two of the many bright lights of the Harlem Renaissance, became his mentors. Oubre says that Woodruff was a master: "He studied with Diego Rivera in Mexico. He was an extraordinarily good muralist." On several occasions, Woodruff became Oubre's benefactor, commissioning his student to paint a room. Oubre was always appreciative of the $5 he received for the task.

"Miss Prophet was a unique person," Oubre recalls. "She had big pieces of sculpture in our studio. During those days you had to copy; copying is how you learned to be a draftsman. Originality was another thing. So I could set up in clay and everybody would say how wonderful it was. I was an A student."

One day, Prophet shared with the class cookies that she had baked herself. When she offered some to Oubre, he politely turned them down. Offended, Prophet later admonished him for being discourteous. "I said, `Miss Prophet, may I explain to you? I just don't eat between meals.' Miss Prophet had a crush on me. But you know why I didn't take advantage of it? Who you know might get mad at you. Who you know might get fired. Who you know might die. But what you know will stay with you."

When a student union was being built at Tuskegee Institute, a school official asked Woodruff to recommend an artist who could provide the creative touches for the new building. Woodruff suggested Oubre. Having spent 18 months in Atlanta, Oubre packed his bags and left for Tuskegee, Ala.

Once again, Oubre's artwork attracted attention. A school administrator stopped him on campus one day to suggest that he visit George Washington Carver, who lived and worked on campus. With some trepidation, Oubre took one of his bookends--an African face sculpted of wood that now sits on his living-room coffee table--to the man's apartment. As soon as Carver opened the door, Oubre handed him the bookends. While Carver's sensitive hands absorbed the piece, Oubre spewed praises. "I wish I could do things as easily as you do," he said.

Carver "delivered a soliloquy" on how nothing had come easily, but he had never given up trying. What was important about the meeting was that Oubre was invited back. "But I never went back, because I was always busy."

Oubre's Tuskegee days coincided with the start of World War II. He was drafted, and instead of being sent off to fight, he went to Canada to help build the Alcan Highway. The weather was brutal, and the living conditions were just as harsh, Oubre's participation in that engineering feat has, belatedly, brought him nearly as much recognition as his art.

When he returned home, he took advantage of the GI Bill and enrolled at the University of Iowa. He was only the third black man to earn a master of fine arts degree. After graduation, he taught at Florida A&M University and then at Alabama State College.

The Prophet, the lifelike sculpture that watches over Oubre's living room and that enjoys his animated accounts of his life, was the first of his wire works to create a stir. He completed it in the 1950s, while he was teaching at Alabama State. "People came from all over," Oubre exclaims. "They couldn't believe it. It was the first big piece I made. I had no references--nobody to study, because nobody had ever done wire like this before. I've had white guys from museums and galleries come look at my artwork. That's why I say, If I was white, I'd be rich as hell. I'm too damn sophisticated to be a black man."

Mark Richard Moss, a freelance writer in Winston-salem, N.C., is currently completing a novel and working on a catalog on Hayward Oubre and his works for a symposium that will be held in April at Winston-Salem State University.

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