Joe Overstreet

Overstreet's family first settled in Conehatta in 1830 and raised trees for wood pulp.

Joe Wesley Overstreet (June 20, 1933 – June 4, 2019 ) was an African-American painter from Mississippi who lived and worked in New York City for most of his career.

Joe Overstreet was born on June 20, 1933, in Conehatta, Mississippi.

His father was a mason, whose work exposed him to construction and architecture which was later to influence his three dimensional paintings.

His family was nomadic, moving five times between 1941 and 1946 before settling in Berkeley, CA. In 1951, Overstreet graduated from Oakland Technical High School in Oakland, California, and worked part time for the Merchant Marines.

That same year, Overstreet began studying art, first at Contra Costa College and then at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute).

His hometown is located in central, rural Mississippi, one of several communities that in 1945 was included in a reservation for the federally recognized Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, who made up the majority of the population.

In the 1950s and early 1960s he was associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement.

In the 1950s Overstreet lived in the North Beach section of San Francisco and was a fixture of the Beat Scene.

He published a journal titled Beatitudes Magazine from his studio, and was part of a collective of African-American artists.

During the early 1950s he exhibited in galleries, teahouses, and jazz clubs throughout the Bay Area, along with young artists such as James Weeks, Nathan Oliveira, and Richard Diebenkorn.

His Grant Street studio was located near that of Sargent Johnson, a sculptor and painter who became a mentor.

Johnson believed in the philosophy of Alain Locke, the so-called “father of the Harlem Renaissance” in New York, who advocated for African-American artists to draw from their ancestral legacy for aesthetic sources and inspiration.

Overstreet's early work of the late 1950s to the mid 1960s assimilates his interests in Abstract Expressionism, jazz, and the painful realities of African-American history, in works such as The Hawk, For Horace Silver (1957), Carry Back (1960), Big Black (1961), and Janet (1964).

He also studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1954.

From 1955 to 1957, Overstreet was part of a community of Black artists in Lost Angeles and worked as an animator for Walt Disney Studios.

In 1958, Overstreet moved to New York City with his friend, Beat poet Bob Kaufman.

During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, he became known for works such as Strange Fruit and The New Jemima, which reflected his interest in contemporary social issues and the Black Arts Movement.

He also worked with Amiri Baraka as the Art Director for the Black Arts Repertory Theatre and School in Harlem, New York.

He began to feel comfortable using cement trowels to apply his paints, in such works as Big Black (1961).

In 1962 Overstreet moved downtown and set up his studio at 76 Jefferson Street, in a loft building where jazz musician Eric Dolphy lived.

From 1963 to 1973 he lived in the East Village at 186 Bowery where he had a brief marriage to opera singer Elaine Overstreet, his third wife.

Elaine birthed Overstreet's third and fourth children.

Jahn Frederick Malcolm Overstreet, and Jamahl Woodford Overstreet.

His painting The New Jemima (1964/1970) (Menil Collection) subverts the stereotypical black image of Aunt Jemima.

Unlike the original character, a domestic servant who exists to please others, Overstreet's Jemima wields a machine gun.

Overstreet recalls of this work:

From 1970 to 1973 they moved to the East Bay Area where Joe Overstreet taught at the University of California at Hayward.

"“Larry Rivers saw [the Aunt Jemima painting] around 1970, and he said that if I made it larger, he would include it in the Some American History exhibition at Rice University. So I made a kind of wooden armature so that the painting would resemble something like a pancake box. I enlarged it especially for this art project, which was part of the effort in 1971 to desegregate Rice University. Rice had a codicil that blacks could never attend that institution.'"

In 1974 he co-founded Kenkeleba House, an East Village gallery and studio.

Upon his return to New York in 1974, Overstreet met his wife, artist Corrine Jennings.

In the 1980s he returned to figuration with his Storyville paintings, which recall the New Orleans jazz scene of the early 1900s.

His work draws on a variety of influences, including his own African-American heritage, and has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world.

He designed displays for store windows to earn a living, and lived and had his studio on 85th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues.

In New York he met Romare Bearden, who was an inspiration to Overstreet, and he studied painting with Hale Woodruff.

He got to know many of the Abstract Expressionist painters from hanging out at Cedar Tavern and felt his real art education came through his relationships with established artists, such as Romare Bearden, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Larry Rivers, Hale A. Woodruff, and Hans Hofmann.

He knew Hofmann's work from Berkeley.

(“I got more out of the Cedar Street Bar than anywhere…”)

Overstreet said, “Looking at Hofmann reminded me of how I saw things naturally, and looking at Pollock reminded me of how I could do things naturally.” De Kooning gave Overstreet some of his works to sell so that the young painter could make it through difficult times.

Overstreet also identified with de Kooning's use of house painter's brushes.