Capturing the Essence
Rising stars in the art world Grace Lynne Haynes and Jordan Casteel had their paintings grace the covers of two prominent magazines, The New Yorker and Vogue.“I’ve always loved being a Black woman; that is the basis of my work,” Haynes, a graduate student at Mason Gross School of the Arts, told The New Yorker, which commissioned her to create the cover for its combined August 3 and 10 issue. Acknowledging the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, Haynes chose to paint abolitionist and suffragist Sojourner Truth. The artist also created the cover image for the magazine’s September 7 style and design issue.
For the September issue of Vogue, Casteel, an assistant professor in the Department of Arts, Culture, and Media at Rutgers University–Newark, depicted fashion designer Aurora James, who won praise for her Fifteen Percent Pledge, a campaign to support Black-owned businesses. “What Aurora is doing is hugely important in creating the long-term change that Black people deserve and this country owes us,” Casteel told Vogue. “What’s most exciting to me is being given artistic integrity and being able to choose the person to be my sitter … This is the way that I speak to the world.”