Blues Wake

Source catalog description

This description refers to material held by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visual details below describe the original material.

A black and white woodcut depicting two men sitting together. The man on the right faces the viewer and resembles blues singer Lead Belly (Huddie William Ledbetter). He sits with a guitar on his lap, his arms folded and resting on top of the guitar’s body. The man on the left is turned to face the man with the guitar, his face in profile to the viewer. Above the men is a round window. The background is entirely covered in a typographic design, with some of the letters arranged to spell out words including “slave,” “enslaves,” “controller,” “made,” and “prison.” Beneath the image, handwritten in graphite, is the title [Blues Wake] at left, edition [2/40] at center, and the artist’s signature and date [John T. Scott ‘03] at right.

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