"It is important to note, however, that several years before Occupy [Wall Street]’s activists uttered their protest [in 2011], Huckaby had addressed similar themes in portraits painted on a matrix of currency as a wry, but forceful cautionary tale about the futility of assigning monetary value to human life. One example is Little D, 2005, a monumental, jewel-like portrait of a newborn infant, whose face emerges from a grid of one-dollar bills. Brushwork and hand-written text partially obscure the infant’s body. Huckaby’s use of vocabulary and currency recalls work by Pop artists of the 1960s, who employed similar compositional devices. But, the visual drama in Little D reads like a baptism by brush. Huckaby’s currency is real, not fabricated, and so are the pages torn from a bible that he collaged along the panel’s lower edge. The text that washes over Little D’s face has the potency of a sermon, counseling the child, and by extension the viewers, about the true value of life." - Rebecca E. Lawton, excerpted from the essay “Fine Art and Common Folks” from the exhibition catalogue Sedrick Huckaby: Everyday Glory (December 4, 2013 – January 11, 2014), published 2017, page 10.
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