Sculptor LaQuincey Reed’s passion swirls around art as it intertwines with history. He gravitates toward creations “of things people don’t know a lot about. I want to get a monument dedicated to the Black cowboy. The West was diverse, and a lot of cowboys were Black.
“I’ve been drawing since I was a kid,” he continues. The Lawton native studied both painting and sculpture, earning a BFA in studio art from the University of Oklahoma. That’s where his talents and preferences leaned heavily into sculpting.
After graduation, Reed worked as a sculptor assistant on Oklahoma City’s Oklahoma Land Run Monument. Then he spent 16 years as a middle school and high school art teacher.
“I noticed a lot of Black students involved in rodeo sports,” he says. “So I wanted to look into Blacks in The West in general.” Now a full-time artist, Reed creates bronzes as well as plasters and cast stones. He often sculpts Black cowboys, but his work is diverse.
An Oklahoma City resident, Reed completed the submission process for the Skirvin Hilton Hotel and Paseo Arts Association Artist in Residence SPACE program, and he nabbed the spot. As Oklahoma City’s oldest hotel, the iconic Skirvin Hilton opened in 1911, and is an Art Deco masterpiece.
Reed now has full use of a one-of-a-kind, window-wrapped studio space on the hotel’s first floor. So, passersby may watch Reed as he sculpts, and they are already popping inside to interact with him and his creations, and discuss art.
Reed looks forward to more commissioned works on his schedule, and he is sitting on a big surprise. New York City’s Salmagundi Club, one of America’s oldest art organizations founded in 1871, asked Reed to participate in a competition. Plus, he’s taking his work to the Whitefish Arts Festival in Montana, and the Buffalo Bill Art Show and Sale in Wyoming.
“I’m finishing pieces on the Congo Cowboys,” he says. “I like things that are different. My sculptures tell stories, and I hope people form emotional relationships with them.”
About the Work
An elected member of the National Sculpture Society based in Oklahoma City, Reed has a long, impressive list of commissioned and completed works. They include reliefs and a life-size, full figure portrait for Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee; a bust of Cheyenne Peace Chief Black Kettle for Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford; the U.S. President Grover Cleveland bust for the Cleveland County Courthouse in Norman; the Eugene B. Adkins portrait bust for the Fred Jones Jr. Museum at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, which includes the 3,300-object Eugene B. Adkins Collection; and works for the State of Oklahoma.
His catalog of exhibitions and awards is already too long to list. He exhibits his artwork across the nation, and his work was included in the Brookgreen Gardens’ juried exhibit on Emerging Stars in American Sculpture.
You may interface and chat with Reed in his studio through September 2022 at the Skirvin, One Park Place in Oklahoma City, on Mondays and Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
