Dawn A. Williams Boyd's Page

Dawn Williams Boyd  is a native Atlantan who spent her formative years in the Mozley Park and Adamsville neighborhoods. The daughter of educators  Narvie  Hill Williams (Puls) and John A. Williams, Ms. Williams Boyd earned her BFA (studio) at Stephens College, Columbia, MO in 1974.She has recently come back home to Atlanta, GA after 30 years of organizing artists, teaching and making art in Denver, CO. 

For the first 20 years of her career, this prolific artist, though skilled in the traditional mediums, concentrated  on acrylic painting, paper collage and bas-relief sculpture. Then in 2002, after conducting a teachers' workshop on the work of artist Faith Ringgold at the Metropolitan State College of Denver, and inspired by Ms. Ringgold's use of pieced fabric as a 'frame' for her paintings, Ms. Williams Boyd turned her attention and prodigious energy to the use of cloth as her primary medium. Dawn describes her current work as paintings in cloth. Her mostly large scale work is primarily figurative and representational, heavily embroidered and embellished with sequins, beads, cowrie shells, bone, metal and silk ribbon. Her subject matter ranges widely, from her series "Sins of the Fathers" which explores incidences of racial violence commited against black Americans, to " The Things that Kids Do" her 21 piece ode to childhood.

Ms. Williams Boyd's acrylic and fiber work has been exhibited in numerous group and one woman exhibits throughout the Unites States: at Schoharie County Arts Council in Cobleskill, NY (2001), Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, IL (2002), The Cherry Creek Arts Festival in Denver, CO (2004), Tyme Gallery in Havertown, PA (2007), and Wayne Art Center in Wayne,PA (2010) to name a few. Her work was featured in the December 2009/January 2010 issue of Quilter's Newsletter Magazine and can be seen locally at Omenala - Griot, an Afrocentric Teaching Museum, which she owns with her brother Kevin H. Williams in Atlanta.