Artist Talk: Melvin Edwards

Artist Melvin Edwards (b. 1937) uses existing objects—chains, shovels, hooks—in small, fierce sculptures that respond to racial violence in the United States.

Examples of this ongoing series Lynch Fragments and the two-part floor work A Conversation with Norman Lewis (1970) are featured in the Smart Museum’s Solidary & Solitary: The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection, through May 19.