W7AC Ward 7 Arts Collaborative

Rik Freeman was born in Athens, GA in 1956, and began his professional career as an Artist / Muralist in Washington, DC in 1989, where he has painted numerous murals throughout the metropolitan area. Including his most recent commissions were SHAW RHYTHMS, in 2003 for the new Washington Convention Center, Wash. DC, and ARL 200, in 2002 at the Arlington County Courthouse, Arlington, VA.

While known more for his public commissions, Rik has a steady exhibition history of his works on canvas, having been featured in numerous group shows in galleries, museums, and cultural centers. Including The Sumner School Museum, and HR-57 Center for the Preservation of Jazz and Blues, both in Wash. DC. In addition, his work is included in many private collections.

Rik is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, most recently with a merit based grant from The Franz and Virginia Bader Fund, Wash. DC. He has received fellowships from The DC Commission on the Arts, and in 1994 was nominated for an Outstanding Emerging Artist Award.

Rik attended The University of Georgia; Athens, GA and Savannah State College, Savannah, GA where he majored in painting.

I have been living and working as a professional Artist / Muralist since 1989. In 1994 I began outlining, researching, and working on a series of paintings called THE CHITTLIN CIRCUIT REVIEW. I have worked on this series intermittently between mural projects. The series is based on the origin, evolution, and fruition of the musical tradition known as the Blues. The paintings focus on a visual interpretation of not only the lyrics, but the reality of the conditions that birthed the Blues, and the music’s impact and inclusion through the 20th century and our current society. The more I work on this series, the more I realize it’s not just an artistic journey, but an anthropological study on a segment of American history.

While the series is based on factual times and conditions, the series revolve around fictional characters, principally Mud Paw Willie and the Dawg Gon Blues Band, and their experiences in and around the Chittlin Circuit ( even before it was known as such ). Through them, the paintings explore all facets of the music from it’s African ancestry of call in response, early gospel influences, and the relation of field and work gang songs and hollers. Also the socio-political conditions that brought a rural agrarian people and their culture up the Mississippi River and on train tracks to northern urban cities and factories.

The series when complete will number 25-40 paintings; my goal is to have the completed series tour, to do a modern version of The Chittlin Circuit. I am seeking avenues on how to have this sponsored and accomplished.

• Chittlin Circuit is a colloquial term used to define the regional area, primarily (but not limited to) in the American south and mid-west where people of African descent were able to live, reside, and perform under the Jim Crow laws of segregation.