Camille Billops Exhibit
The Leeway Foundation, in partnership with the Brandywine Workshop and Scribe Video Center, presents a selection of prints by renowned artist and archivist Camille Billops as well as promotional posters from some of her films, on exhibit from April 6 to May 31.
Camille’s films will be shown as part of Scribe Video Center’s Producers’ Forum series on April 3 at Scribe (4212 Chestnut St.) and on April 4 at the International House (3701 Chestnut St.). Camille will be present to answer questions after the screenings. For more information click here.
Camille and her husband, theater historian James V. Hatch, will also be facilitating a master class at Scribe Video Center, entitled “Filmmaker as Subject” on April 3. For more information click here.
About Camille Billops
Camille Billops’ career spans 50+ years and has crossed disciplines including ceramics, printmaking, sculpture, book illustration, and filmmaking. She has exhibited worldwide in both group and solo shows. Her sculptures and prints are included in many permanent collections. In 1978 she assisted long time friend and colleague, Robert Blackburn in establishing the first printmaking workshop in Asilah, Morocco.
Since the late 1980s, Camille has co-produced and directed six award-winning documentaries—Suzanne, Suzanne, which was chosen by the Museum of Modern Art for its prestigious New Directors Series in 1983; Finding Christa, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992; and her most recent film, A String of Pearls, which was chosen as the opening night film for the Planet Africa series at the Toronto Film Festival in 2002.
Camille has exhibited at the Studio Museum of Harlem, as well as in Hamburg, Germany; Cairo, Egypt; Los Angeles, and New York. She wrote and published The Harlem Book of the Dead, featuring the poetry of Owen Dodson and the photography of James Van Der Zee. She has received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Rockefeller Fellowship in Filmmaking, and the Skowhegan Award for contribution in the arts. Most recently, she exhibited in the photo retrospective for the Percent for Art Exhibition in New York, at the Parsons School of Design, and was elected to the Advisory Board of WAAND—The National Directory of Women Artists Archives—at Rutgers University at New Brunswick.
In 1975 Camille and James founded the Hatch-Billops Collection. Currently housed at Atlanta’s Emory University, the collection of books, manuscripts, photographs, oral histories, and other valuable materials, focuses on African American arts and letters of the 20th century.
Camille’s prints and posters will be available for viewing at Leeway’s office located at 1315 Walnut Street, Suite 832 (between 13th and Juniper Streets). The work can be viewed during office hours and by appointment only. To schedule a visit call (215) 545-4078.
