Guest curator Carlton Wilkinson will moderate this compelling panel discussion about the life, work, and legacy of Barbara Bullock. Featuring Henry Jones, Andrée LeQuire, and Aïssatou Sidimé-Blanton, the conversation will center on the exhibition Sistah Griot: The Iconoclastic Art of Barbara Bullock.
About the Panelists
Henry L. Jones
Henry L. Jones is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. Often inspired by African diasporic culture, history, and people, his paintings and sculptures have been exhibited in museums, universities, and galleries and included in academic and commercial publications. As a writer, Jones creates poetry, plays, and articles. His poems appear internationally in anthologies, journals, collaborative work, and films such as Nashville Visionaries, In this Season, Chapter 16, Word Peace Journal, Setu Magazine, Hendersonville Lifestyle Magazine, In Fullness of the Word: An Anthology of Black American Poet Laureates, and 20/20 Vision Czech Republic: A Poetic Look at Photography. An author of three books of poetry and four books of nonfiction, his most recent is Black Skillet Blues: Poetry without Cornbread (Beatlick Press, 2025). In 2021, Jones became the first poet laureate of Hendersonville, Tennessee. His article about Barbara Bullock, a longtime friend and celebrated artist, was a cover story for Contempora Magazine. Jones is a Fisk University graduate and a Detroit native who lives in Middle Tennessee.
Aïssatou Sidimé-Blanton
Aïssatou Sidimé-Blanton, CFP®, CLU (she/her) is a collector of contemporary visual art by African American women and vice president and former curator of the San Antonio Ethnic Arts Society (SAEAS), a forty-two-year-old POC arts organization that coordinates public art exhibits and raises funds to underwrite one-on-one art training for youth in San Antonio, Texas. She also is a member of the San Antonio Area Foundation’s Community Advisory Committee that approves arts-related grants. A former newspaper reporter, Sidimé-Blanton has contributed arts-related articles to International Review of African American Art, San Antonio Express-News, Black Focus magazine, Tampa Tribune, and Blackbook.com. She has facilitated exhibitions at former StoneMetal Press Printing Studio for Valerie Maynard, MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Dr. John T. Scott, Steve Prince, and Deborah Roberts of Austin. She and her husband, Stewart Blanton, also partner with the San Antonio Ethnic Art Society to underwrite the SAEAS Abaraka Award, a $3,000 biennial grant that supports visual arts, arts research and curatorial projects by African American women artists and art professionals; for more information, visit SAEthnicArtSociety.org.
Andrée LeQuire
Andrée LeQuire is the co-owner of LeQuire Gallery & Studio, a longstanding destination for contemporary art and the studio where nationally recognized sculptural projects—including monumental commissions—come to life. Andrée also serves as president of the Fountains of Musica Foundation, the nonprofit stewarding Nashville’s iconic public sculpture, Musica—one of the largest figurative bronze sculpture groups in the country—to complete its intended fountain and create a public gathering space for all. Her lifelong dedication to creativity, public space, and civic engagement has earned her a reputation as a champion for artists and an advocate for building a city where art is considered essential infrastructure. Andrée served on the Metro Nashville Arts Commission for more than eight years, including three as chair. She helped launch several of Nashville’s key cultural institutions as a founding board member of The Visual Arts Alliance, The Red Grooms Carousel, and the Frist Art Museum. She is also an alumna of the 1993 Leadership Nashville class.
Carlton Wilkinson
Carlton Wilkinson is a Nashville native who received the Tennessee Artist Fellowship (1994), the state’s highest honor for an artist. He began his studies as an artist at Washington University at St. Louis, where he earned his BFA, and went on to receive an MFA in design at the University of California, Los Angeles. Wilkinson has exhibited his photography nationally, including at Cal Lutheran University; the Smithsonian Institution; the University of Notre Dame; Vanderbilt University; University of Berkeley, California; Fisk University; the Frist Art Museum; and several private and public art galleries. Wilkinson’s photography was also included in the traveling exhibition and book Reflections in Black. He has taught at Vanderbilt University, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Fisk University, and Watkins College of Art, and has lectured at Harvard University, the University of Houston, and in Palermo, Johannesburg, Jamaica, and Colombia. Wilkinson opened his Nashville gallery, In The Gallery, in 1987; his current business, Wilkinson Arts, represents artwork of the African diaspora.
Top photo: Barbara Bullock. Untitled (Circus), ca. 1990. Acrylic on canvas; 12 x 24 in. Collection of Carlton F. Wilkinson, Nashville. Photo: John Schweikert
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