using acrylic paint to color over the edges of the canvas onto the frames of the painting. Similarly to his drape paintings, these beveled paintings blurred the line between sculpture and paintings, while retaining a distinct commitment to abstraction. In 1971, he boycotted an event at the Whitney Museum, in New York, in support of and in solidarity with the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition as a protest against the museum for failing to consult with black art experts in selecting art for the show. In 1972, Gilliam represented the United States at the 36th Venice Biennale in a group show curated by Walter Hopps. His draped canvas Baroque Cascade (1968) was exhibited at the show, a multi-canvas installation that stretched over 75 feet before being hung from the rafters in the exhibition hall. The work had originally been shown at the Corcoran Gallery in 1969 in a show of Gilliam's work organized by Hopps. Gilliam was the first African-American artist to show at the Biennale for the United States, although no African-American artist represented the US with a solo show until Robert Colescott's solo exhibition in 1997. Career in the 1970s and 1980s In 1975, Gilliam veered away from the draped canvases, and became influenced by jazz musicians such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane. He started producing dynamic geometric collages, which he called "Black Paintings" because they are painted in shades of black. Works like Rail (1977) typify this style, with thick layers of black paint and outlines of sharp geometric shapes. In the 1980s Gilliam's style changed dramatically once more, transitioning to paintings reminiscent of African patchwork quilts from his childhood, using an improvisational approach. These works often included multiple canvases carved into geometric shapes and combined into a single form. The transition between his "Black Paintings" and quilt-inspired paintings can be seen in his Wild Goose Chase series. Later career In the late 1980s and 1990s, Gilliam was largely overlooked by the institutional art world. He showed his work very infrequently outside of Washington, D.C., during this time, as a result of both his desire to work in his own community and a decline in interest from critics and museums in New York. Despite this isolation from a broader audience, he continued to produce paintings in new forms and developed new approaches to abstraction, including experimentation with metal forms and the use of washi paper to create