Selma Burke
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Selma Burke was born in North Carolina and was 1 of 10 children. She would grow up to be a pivotal figure in the Harlem Renaissance and an iconic Black sculptor with a career that spanned 60 years.
Burke’s first experience with clay was at the age of 7. There was a riverbed near her family’s farm, and she would often play with the clay she dug out. She would later describe this as her first encounter with sculpture and insist that “it was there in 1907 that I discovered me.”
Despite this, Burke went on to attend nursing school and moved to Harlem to work as a private nurse. It was not long after moving to New York that Burke began taking art classes and took part in the Harlem Renaissance – a cultural and intellectual revival of African American arts in all its forms. Harlem became a hub for cultural expression as African Americans fled the Jim Crow Laws of the South.
Burke began teaching arts and studied under Augusta Savage, an African American sculptor. She traveled to Paris and Vienna to continue her studies and in 1941 received her Master of Fine Arts degree.
