great Artist .........old friend .....Teri Richardson a talented a great person and beautiful to boot.............

Teri Richardson Art'90

As a young woman, Teri Gandy Richardson intended to study architecture. She became a painter while earning her BFA from The Cooper Union and studied art therapy at New York University and the New School. Teri's acclaimed paintings are included in the collections of the Hampton University Museum and in private and gallery collections throughout the United States. Teri is foremost a painter, however her new works came to fruition during a 2008 laboratory for practicing artists held at the School of Visual Arts. She began exploring the history, meaning and artistic possibilities of an iconic American and internationally popular material, Denim.
Teri dissected her own worn, about to be discarded jeans. In reconnecting individual pieces to create a canvas for painting, she noticed the pieces resembled hides or pelts, the pockets that were torn away from the whole of its body, disparate pieces that recalled similar iconic forms in her paintings.
Teri researched the history of denim's creation, its use and association with the American labor force. Indigo, the color of traditional jeans was an early cash crop grown and harvested by African American slaves. Levi Strauss revealed that his denim jeans were developed for workers migrating during the California Gold Rush. Early and mid-20th century, denim was utilized to show rebellion, rejecting the status quo and continues to stand as a traditional wardrobe for millions of working men and women.
From June through August of summer 2009, the East Village gallery Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba, presented Teri's exhibition titled Blue Cotton. Art created from blue denim; evoked from the whispered memories of slaves, the sweat and struggles of blue collar workers, the fierceness of bikers riding the highways of Route 66 and from the often unspoken stories of women and men who defined themselves simply by wearing denim.
Teri's honors include grants from the Puffin Foundation, an International Cultural Exchange Award to work in San Juan, Puerto Rico, a Saltonstall Summer Residency and a National Talent Search Award from Pratt Institute. She had a 2006 retrospective of her artwork titled, Teri Richardson: From Brooklyn to Miami, at the Diaspora Vibe Gallery in Miami, Florida.