Beverly Buchanan's Architecture of Care

"Beverly Buchanan, who died in 2015 at age 74, was an artist, writer, joke-teller, gardener, nurse, pharmacist, doctor, healer, disability activist, customer, futurist, and neighbor. She is perhaps best known for her representational sculptures of "shacks," also known as "row" or "shotgun" houses. Her work as a whole is more difficult to categorize - across many media, she articulated nuanced understandings of land, architecture, and placed-based making that probed themes of class, gender, and identity."

"The work is a tall, standing self-portrait assembled from found scraps of wood, painted jars with visible brushstrokes, and scraps of textile. She has a cane, and she stands atop a handmade box that is filled with medicine bottles, rocks, and other scraps of ephemera from around the artist's home."

Beverly Buchanan (1941-2015) was a multidisciplinary artist known for sculptural representations of Southern shotgun houses and shacks. Her practice extended beyond visual art to include writing, gardening, healing work, and disability activism. Buchanan's work articulated nuanced understandings of land, architecture, and community identity, probing themes of class, gender, and belonging. Though she lived in multiple states including North Carolina, New York, and Florida, she spent significant time in Athens, Georgia, where she became a beloved community member despite lacking institutional recognition during her lifetime. Recent exhibitions have finally brought her work to local institutions, including a major retrospective at the Georgia Museum of Art.

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