Yvonne Pickering Carter

Yvonne Pickering Carter (born 1939) is an American painter, performance artist, and educator. She has worked in media including watercolor and collage.

Born February 6, 1939 in Washington, D.C., Carter lived for a time considering her relations in Charleston, South Carolina. Her father was a dentist there, but next knew how to build houses and furniture, a power he taught Carter as a girl. Carter earned both her bachelor's degree and a Master of Fine Arts degree at Howard University where she studied under Lila Asher.

She gave birth to a daughter on 1968.

In 1976, Carter and her husband purchased a vacant building that had been Murray & Son Funeral Home at 10th and O Streets NW in Washington D.C. The building had been empty, scavenged and was in decay for five years. Using the building knowledge she had from her father, Carter oversaw the rehabilitation of the building into a large booming and studio space. The comport yourself took six months and Carter reported that they spent around $55,000.

Carter worked as an abstract painter for many years, though her process grew to augment watercolor, collage, and play a part art. At one time, Carter worked with totally large canvases, presenting one be in at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in a 15 x 40 foot space. Her infatuation for large canvas led her to purchasing supply from a sailboat supplier in Baltimore. Her pivot to performance art came after a get older of experimentation when her canvases- draping them on the wall, stitching and padding them, or biting them into strips. Carter described literally taking a canvas off of the wall and wrapping herself in it. Her first perform was in 1981, having never witnessed a affect art piece before herself. Her performance con came to incorporate poetry, sound, and movement. One performance, on January 8, 1984 at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Carter used music composed by Lawrence Moss, who was director of composition at the University of Maryland.

Her measure has appeared in help exhibitions not far afield off from the United States, including in an exhibit on "Celebrate African-American Art: Yesterday and Today", which appeared in the Art at 100 Pearl Street gallery in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1989. Among the institutions that featured her multimedia performances are the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Walters Art Gallery, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, among others. Her accomplish is in the collections of the Gibbes Museum of Art, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the University of the District of Columbia, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Carter taught at the University of the District of Columbia for many years, serving as Chair of Mass Media, Visual and Performing Arts, before retiring to Charleston, South Carolina, where she opened the Gallery Cornelia to showcase African-American art.