With no known images of Mr. Rouse, Huckaby created Contemplating Fred Rouse (2021), a video projection capturing the artist’s repetitive charcoal drawings of male figures being drawn, erased, and redrawn, progressing from older men to the artist’s own teenage son. Through this compassionate and mournful gesture, Huckaby attempts to imagine not only what Mr. Fred Rouse might have looked like, but who he could have been.
As community research was done on Fred Rouse and his family, Mr. Rouse’s grandson was located in Fort Worth, Texas. With no knowledge of his grandfather’s fate, Fred Rouse III learned of his grandfather’s tragic death. With the descendants of Mr. Rouse discovered, Huckaby created a second film, Portrait of Fred Rouse (2022-2023), based upon portraits of Mr. Rouse’s son, grandson, and great grandson. The audio features Fred Rouse III singing Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.”
