Artist David Huffman's Provo Soul

David Huffman creates “social abstractions,” large-scale paintings combining social and political themes with inventive abstract mark making. Influenced by progressive Black politics, Afrofuturism, Pop art, basketball, and the television shows Star Trek and Astro Boy, Huffman layers these references to reflect on the African American experience.

Born in 1963 in Berkeley, California, Huffman was raised in a politically minded family. His activist mother, Dolores Davis was friends with Bobby Seale who—along with Huey Newton—co-founded the Black Panther Party, a Black power political organization, in October 1966. Their home was often a haven for protesters seeking refuge from National Guard troops and a gathering place for philosophers, musicians, artists, and cultural organizers. Huffman remembers participating in rallies for social justice as a child, although he admits to not being able to comprehend the gravity of the situation at the time. "I was five years old," he recalled, "and holding a picket sign every Saturday, when, it's like, I'd rather watch cartoons."

Tapping into a childhood fascination with science fiction and astronomy, Huffman transports us to cosmic realms in his painting Provo Soul (2023). Images of basketballs float in fields of cosmic-like dust like our own planet and others in our solar system, which appear throughout this celestial work. Huffman uses basketball imagery, including the circuitous netting of hoop chains stenciled onto the painting with spray paint, to ground his work in the urban environment of his youth while also inspiring wonder and awe. For Huffman, basketball is like ballet. Basketball is freedom and flying. Jumping and double jumping across an expansive space seemingly possible only in one's dreams.

More than a decade ago, Huffman abandoned figurative painting to explore the rich and expansive terrain of abstraction. In Provo Soul, his recognizable “Traumanauts” reemerge once again, recalling NASA’s Cold War-era space race to the moon and Sun Ra’s hypnotic sonic experimentations. These Black astronauts travel the galaxy, freed from a world that has stripped them and many Black Americans of their own history and culture, in search of a place to create a new home.

Huffman and his family are also part of this futuristic narrative. An image of his mother holding the iconic "Free Huey" flag that she designed appears in the painting, excised from a reproduction of a photograph by Kenneth P. Green, Sr., and placed into an otherworldly dimension. Huffman recalls sitting with his mother as she designed her own version of the Black Panther Party's logo during the campaign to liberate Newton from prison in 1968. Huffman was five years old at the time and into drawing the classic Christmas holiday character Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, so he helped his mother render the panther’s paws. A young Huffman appears in this celestial painting too. He and his older brother Robert are embraced by Seale and flanked by his eldest brother Roland.

Provo Soul is named after Provo Park in Berkeley. The official name of the park is Civic Center Park, but activists of the 1960s called the park Provo in support of the counterculture movement happening in The Netherlands at time. The logo for the American musical variety show Soul Train appears stamped many times over in the painting. Huffman acknowledges the liminal space of television and the studio where African Americans could freely express themselves, aligning it with the communal gathering space of Provo Park where, in the 60s and 70s, was a place to see art shows, listen to music, the band Santana might've showed up, along with the Black Panthers.

"It was a real kind of hippie fest," Huffman said about Provo Park events. "And it always struck me as an interesting space where so many cultures and ideas came together rather well."