Kara Walker - artist

FaceBook can be fun at times.  Yesterday, a friend posted this on her FB status, which I didn't read until this morning:

This is a game apparently designed to keep art alive. Comment on this status and I will assign you an artist. It doesn't matter if you don't know them, just google him/her and post one of your favorite works that you find by them.  My artist friend will have to help me assign artists. She gave me Gustav Klimt.

I played along unwittingly because I responded immediately with "I <3 Gustav Klimt" - his name jumped out at me before even reading her status.

Well, today I was assigned Kara Walker, someone I had never heard of.  That was a good thing because I learned something new on this first day of the New Year and the New Moon!  I spent about a half hour looking at the images that Google has and then commented on my friend's status:

I just spent 1/2 hour looking at work done by Kara Walker. It was very disturbing, but that's one of the "jobs" of art, I think - to stun you in a variety of ways. I will post one of her works later - I had to take a break from them.

I couldn't pick any one picture, so I've chosen this video to display her work and hear her words.  The two really cannot be separated in my opinion.

I've decided to do a weekly post about artists for my own education - I know so little about art and I am so moved by much of it.  I'm hoping that the friend of a friend will toss me some names so that I can learn about them.  Feel free to join in!