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== Early life and education ==
Buchanan was born on October 8, 1940 in [[Fuquay, North Carolina|Fuquay]], [[North Carolina]] to Irene Rogers. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she was
Buchanan spent a considerable amount of time with her adopted father on his trips where he would work with
In 1962, Buchanan graduated from [[Bennett College]], in [[Greensboro, North Carolina]], a historically black women's college, with a Bachelor of Science degree in medical technology.<ref name="CWA">"Beverly Buchanan" (1999). ''Contemporary Women Artists''. Detroit: Gale. Retrieved via ''Biography in Context'', 1 January 2017.</ref> She went on to attend [[Columbia University]], where she received a master's degree in [[parasitology]] in 1968, and a master's degree in [[public health]] in 1969.<ref name="CWA" /> After graduating, she worked in medical technologist for the [[Veterans Administration Hospital in the Bronx]], as well as a public health educator on vaccination, breastfeeding, and birth control for the [[East Orange, New Jersey|East Orange]] Health Department.<ref name=":6" /> While working in New Jersey, Buchanan applied to medical school; although she was accepted to medical school as an alternate at [[Mount Sinai Hospital (Manhattan)|Mount Sinai]], Buchanan decided not to go due to her desire to dedicate more time to her art.<ref name="GAencyc" /><ref name=":1" /> Part of this choice consisted of her decision to "express the images, stories, and architecture of her African American childhood".<ref name="NewGAEncyclopedia-Profile-2005" />
== Career ==
Buchanan began creating paintings and sculptures in the 1960s, showing her work at exhibitions and fairs in [[Staten Island]] and the Bronx.<ref>{{Cite book |url=http://archive.org/details/gumboyayaantholo0000unse |title=Gumbo Ya Ya: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists |date= |publisher=Midmarch Arts Press |others=Internet Archive |year=1995 |isbn=978-1-877675-07-2 |editor-last=Moore |editor-first=Sylvia |series=Documenting Women in the Arts |location=New York}}</ref> In 1971,
In 1976 and 1977, Buchanan drew "black walls" on paper.<ref name="shackworks2">{{cite book|last1=Buchanan|first1=Beverly|editor1-last=Flomenhaft|editor1-first=Eleanor|chapter=Shack Portraiture: An Interview with Beverly Buchanan|title=Beverly Buchanan: ShackWorks|date=1994|page=13}}</ref> She "wanted to see what the wall looked like on the other side" and put four walls together in three dimensions.<ref name="shackworks2" /> She then began to sculpt in cement. An example of a three-dimensional work from her early career is the sculpture "Ruins and Rituals" at the [[Museum of Arts and Sciences (Macon, Georgia)|Museum of Arts and Sciences]] in [[Macon, Georgia]], part of a series of concrete structures that recall ancient tombs.<ref>{{cite web|title=Ruins and Rituals|url=http://www.masmacon.org/ruins-and-rituals|series=Collections|publisher=Museum of Arts and Sciences. masmacon.org|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160430002551/http://www.masmacon.org/ruins-and-rituals|archive-date=30 April 2016|access-date=1 January 2017}}</ref>
Buchanan is best known for her many paintings and sculptures on the "[[shack]]," a rudimentary dwelling associated with the poor.<ref name="Marquardt">Marquardt, Janet T. "[http://www.collegeart.org/awards/cwa2005 Beverly Buchanan] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150327010805/http://www.collegeart.org/awards/cwa2005 |date=2015-03-27 }}", section in ''2005 CWA Annual Recognition Awards''. College Art Association. collegeart.org. Retrieved 2 January 2017.</ref> Scholar Janet T. Marquardt argues that Buchanan treats shacks not as documentary elements but as "images of endurance and personal history"; often using bright colors and a style of childlike simplicity, the works "evoke the warmth and happiness that can be found even in the meanest dwelling, representing the faith and caring that is not reserved for privileged classes."<ref name="Marquardt"/> Her art takes the form of stone pedestals, bric-a brac assemblages, funny poems, self portraits and sculptural shacks. But potent themes of identity, place and collective memory unite the works uncovering the animus that runs through them: to connect with those around her and reckon with the history that shaped her communities.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-fiercely-independent-artist-beverly-buchanan-finally-gets-the-retrospective-she-deserves|title=Fiercely Independent Artist Beverly Buchanan Finally Gets the Retrospective She Deserves|last=Gotthardt|first=Alexxa|date=2016-10-27|work=Artsy|access-date=2018-05-23|language=en}}</ref> She cited [[Nellie Mae Rowe]] as an inspiration for her work, particularly her shacks.<ref name=":4" />
Buchanan is noted to have seen viewers sitting on her stone art piece ''Unity Stones,'' but let the men remain seated because she did not mind people sitting on her pieces as they contemplated the work and it represented. "The piece serves as a communal place to sit and talk, and do the other things that we do."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Campbell|first=Andy|date=2016|title="We're Going To See Blood On Them Next": Beverly Buchanan's Georgia Ruins and Black Negativity|url=https://doi.org/10.20415/rhiz/029.e05|journal=Rhizomes|issue=29|page=1 |doi=10.20415/rhiz/029.e05 |via=Google Scholar|doi-access=free}}</ref>
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==== ''Marsh Ruins'' ====
[[File:SSW tip of St. Simons Island - panoramio.jpg|thumb|[[St. Simons Island]], near Buchanan's ''Marsh Ruins.'']]
In 1981, Buchanan created ''[[Marsh Ruins]],'' a temporal land art sculpture on the coast of Georgia in
Buchanan said of her work, ''"My work is a logical progression of my early interest in textures and surfaces and walls. The early "walls" were lonely, freestanding, fragmented things. When I lived in New York I was looking for things that were demolished. That gave them character. I liked to imagine who might have lived in the apartment, and whose home it might have been. Each family that moved in repainted the walls their color. When a building is torn down the various layers of color are exposed. It is almost surgical--like looking through a microscope and looking at different layers of tissue and media."''<ref name="ReferenceA">{{cite book|last1=Georgia Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts|title=9 Women in Georgia: An Exhibition of Contemporary Art|date=1996}}</ref>
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In an interview with Angela Son, Son asked Buchanan what her concept of home was and Buchanan responded with, "[Home] means what I've stablished and where I am, wherever that is. And it means South Carolina, where I grew up... I consider home as where I grew up."<ref>{{Cite web|last=Son|first=Angela|date=November 8, 2012|title=Interview with Beverly Buchanan|url=http://www.artanimalmag.com/beverly-buchanan/|access-date=December 10, 2020|website=Art Animal}}</ref>
Buchanan's last official outdoor sculpture was "Blue Station Stones," a public art project designed for
==== Death and representation ====
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*[[Mercer University]], Macon, GA, 1977
*[[Upsala College]], East Orange, NJ, 1974
*[[Cinque Gallery]], New York, 1972
==References==
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[[Category:21st-century African-American artists]]
[[Category:21st-century African-American women]]
[[Category:African-American LGBT people]]
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