Robert Pruitt’s "Woman with ceramic headdress from TSU (study)"

2024

Robert Pruitt combines influences from the agricultural South with ceramic styles learned at TSU.

Texas Southern University (TSU) alumnus Robert Pruitt is known for incorporating imagery from hip-hop, science fiction, comic books, and African traditions into his art. In this drawing, a woman wears a cape made of chicken feathers—reflecting Pruitt’s ties to the agricultural South—and a headdress inspired by fellow TSU alum Calvin Hubbard’s 1966 terra cotta sculpture, Figure with Bird and Turtle. Pruitt, who graduated from TSU in 2000, maintains that the terra cotta sculptures at TSU’s museum convey 1960s and '70s social and political ideas – ideas that now shape Pruitt’s work.