New Orleans art triennial: Artist Amanda Williams revives George Washington Carver’s century-old patent for blue paint — and a powerful history

CNN — A century ago, the scientist and inventor George Washington Carver filed two patents related to his new method for making paints and stains from Alabama’s clay. Tom Harris/Amanda Williams LLC Williams knew that Carver had a lesser-known artmaking practice — he had even exhibited a painting at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The second is a shotgun-style house on the campus of the New Orleans African American Museum, located in Tremé, the oldest Black neighborhood in the country, where Williams notes there is a “lineage” of self-determination. Color and race Williams never expected to find herself in such a deep rabbit hole over Carver’s history — after all, the scientist was best known for his work with agricultural crops. For her project “Color Theory,” from 2014-16, she painted condemned houses on the historically underfunded South Side neighborhood of Englewood in vivid monochromatic colors pulled from products marketed towards Black consumers — from the bright blue hair product Ultra Sheen to the deep purple of whisky Crown Royal’s packaging.