Joe Overstreet

(1933-2019)

Joe Overstreet belonged to a generation of contemporary African-American visual artists who were born in Conehatta, Mississippi in 1933. Overstreet is well-known for his abstract paintings that overlapped into sculptural dimensions. He referenced ancient and modern Islamic design, African patterning, and South Asian mandalas. Later in his career, he created a home in New York for artists who had been ignored by the mainstream. Overstreet has been published in “Now Dig This! : Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980” at the Hammer Museum in LA in 2011 which traveled to the MoMA, and was displayed in the traveling exhibition of  “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power”