Ta-coumba T. Aiken

Ta-coumba Tyrone Aiken (born Tyrone Aiken in 1952, Evanston, Illinois) is a painter and public artist who identifies his work as superlative realism. He has created over 600 murals and public art works. He has also taught and curated. He is sometimes referred to as the "mayor of Lowertown" for his neighborhood presence at his longtime studio in the Lowertown Lofts Artists Cooperative in the Lowertown neighborhood in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Early life Tyrone Aiken was born on December 29, 1952, in Evanston, Illinois. Aiken's parents changed his name when he was nine at his grandmother's discretion. While in high school in Evanston, he attended the International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado. murals on a new apartment building in the Rondo neighborhood of Saint Paul, and the ceramic fireplace on the fourth floor of the Minneapolis Central Library. It remains the world record for the largest picture made from Lite Brite. the McKnight Foundation, the Minneapolis Central Library, and Augsburg University, among others.

Collaborations Aiken often collaborates with fellow artist Seitu Jones. They have collaborated since 1972 and done many murals together. In 1992, they created "Shadows of Spirit," a series of sculptures in the form of human silhouettes cast in bronze that were embedded in the Nicollet Mall wide sidewalks as a commission by the City of Minneapolis. Poetry by Rosemary Soyini Vinelle Guyton is inscribed on each shadow. At the time of their initial installation in 1992, the city did not allow individuals to be identified in art works, so the public had a more difficult time connecting the sculptures with the stories of the people behind them.

Nellie Stone Johnson, a union organizer and the first black elected official in Minneapolis; Woo Yee Sing, an early Chinese immigrant to Minneapolis, owned a Chinese restaurant off Nicollet at 6th Street; a settler of the Bohemian Flats, a low-lying area on the west bank of the Mississippi; writer Meridel LeSueur; Dred Scott, an African-American man who was enslaved and sued the Supreme Court for his freedom and the freedom of his wife, Harriet Robinson; and Aŋpetu Sapa Wiŋ (Dark Day Woman), a member of the Dakota Tribe, who according to legend, took her own life by paddling a canoe over St. Anthony Falls.

In 2019, the two artists, along with Guyton, developed seven sculptures at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden entitled "Shadows at the Crossroads" that were intended as an extension of their 1992 Shadows project.

Awards and fellowships

Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts, 2022 Knight Arts Challenge Grant, 2015 Bush Visual Arts fellowship, 1992 Gottlieb Fellowship