What’s the point of writing another blog post?
What’s the point of writing another blog post when you just don’t feel like it? You’ve been at it for years (or months), what’s the point?
Artist: Harmonia Rosales
At the time I didn't know who the artist was but my first thought was....now this makes sense. It was that moment of wow! This is an art piece I would love to see up close.
Time to Rest, Paint Brushes Down
It's so hard for me to just stop and rest. Even now I'm writing this blog, but you know what I mean, right? At least I hope so.
Lipstick Speed Painting
Speed Painting of Lipstick & My thoughts and experience with filming my work. Learning to let go, enjoy the process and PAINT....because that’s what it’s really about.
Packaging & Shipping Art (16 inches by 20 inches)
Packaging a 16 inch by 20 inch canvas sounds easy to say but with two small children, a husband and working overnights, what should have been a seemingly small task to complete turned into....something much more time consuming and I'm so glad I did some test shipping.
“My Soul Has Grown Deep”
My Soul Has Grown Deep considers the art-historical significance of contemporary Black artists and quilters working throughout the southeastern United States and Alabama in particular. See sources for more Information.
Eartha Kitt (From “Anna Lucasta”) by Charles White
In a recent blog post about Dr. Kellie Jones, I found this art work by Charles White one of the artist discussed in South of Pico. I absolutely love Eartha Kitt and had to know more about this artwork.
Read more Eartha Kitt (From “Anna Lucasta”) by Charles White
South of Pico by Kellie Jones
In South of Pico Kellie Jones explores how the artists in Los Angeles's black communities during the 1960s and 1970s created a vibrant, productive, and engaged activist arts scene in the face of structural racism. Emphasizing the importance of African American migration, as well as L.A.'s housing and employment politics, Jones shows how the work of black Angeleno artists such as Betye Saar, Charles White, Noah Purifoy, and Senga Nengudi spoke to the dislocation of migration, L.A.'s urban renewal, and restrictions on black mobility.
Muse for “Glory” by Elizabeth Catlett
In a recent blog post about Elizabeth Catlett's sculpture tilted "Glory" I wanted to know more about the art work. Who is the woman depicted? What is her significance to the arts and history? After researching I was amazed. The woman sculpted below is Glory Van Scott, actor, dancer, and educator. Read the excerpt of her story here.
Chorus Lines, Rhythm & Blues: Artist Archibald J. Motley Jr.
I think I’ve fallen in love with this art piece. Excerpt from Nasher, Motley was 70 years old when he painted the oil on canvas, Hot Rhythm, in 1961. This painting explores one of Motley’s favorite subjects, the jazz age. The artist loved to walk the streets of Bronzeville, a once-thriving neighborhood in Chicago’s South…
Read more Chorus Lines, Rhythm & Blues: Artist Archibald J. Motley Jr.
“Glory” inspires Quiet Pride: The Elizabeth Catlett Project
Elizabeth Catlett's "Glory" inspires music. The sculptures of the late African-American artist and civil rights activist Elizabeth Catlett are the inspiration for a new jazz composition. Rufus Reid, a bass musician who's been playing jazz for half a century, uses Catlett's artwork to explore the intersection between music and the visual arts. In his new project, called "Quiet Pride," Reid tries to convey Catlett's sculptures in sound. [1]
Read more “Glory” inspires Quiet Pride: The Elizabeth Catlett Project
“Untitled” New Orleans Series by Gwendolyn Knight, 1941
"Untitled" New Orleans Series by Gwendolyn Knight, 1941
Read more “Untitled” New Orleans Series by Gwendolyn Knight, 1941
“Madonna” by Elizabeth Catlett
From an early age I've always been fascinated by the Madonna and child imagery. "Madonna, in Christian art, depiction of the Virgin Mary; the term is usually restricted to those representations that are devotional rather than narrative and that show her in a nonhistorical context and emphasize later doctrinal or sentimental significance. The Madonna is accompanied most often by the infant Christ, [but she can be depicted alone.]" [1]
Introduction to Sande Masks
The Sande Society is a fellowship of women found in West African cultures, which aims at preparing girls for adulthood. [2]
Carrie Mae Weems – Artist
Considered one of the most influential contemporary American artists, Carrie Mae Weems has investigated family relationships, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems, and the consequences of power. Determined as ever to enter the picture—both literally and metaphorically—Weems has sustained an on-going dialogue within contemporary discourse for over thirty years. During this time, Carrie Mae Weems has developed a complex body of art employing photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation, and video.[1]
Renee Cox – Artist & Photographer
Renee Cox continues to question society and the roles it gives to blacks and women with her elaborate scenarios and imaginative visuals that offend some and exhilarate others.[2]
Clementine Hunter – Folk Artist
Clementine Hunter is celebrated for her use of bold colors and shapes to narrate plantation life in 19th and 20th century Louisiana as an African American. Clementine Hunter is Louisiana’s most famous female artist, and she is one of the most important folk artists of all time.
Her work can be seen in the Smithsonian Institute, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Museum of American Folk Art in New York, the High Museum of Atlanta, the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, the New York Historical Association, the Oprah Winfrey Collection in Chicago and many other museums and private collections across the country.[1]
Dr. Selma Burke – Sculptor
Some of Burke’s most notable sculptures include Temptation (1938), Despair (1951), Fallen Angel(1958), Mother and Child (1968), and Together (1975). A nine-foot statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. she completed while in her eighties is on display in Marshall Park in Charlotte, North Carolina. She received numerous awards and honors which included three honorary doctorate degrees. In 1979 Burke was recognized by President Jimmy Carter for her contribution to African American art history.[4]
Augusta Savage – Sculptor
In the 1920s Augusta Savage received commissions to create portrait busts of W.E.B. Du Bois and black nationalist Marcus Garvey; both pieces were hailed for their power and dynamism. On the strength of these works and especially the poignant Gamin (1929)—a portrait bust of a streetwise boy and one of Savage’s few extant pieces—she received a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship that enabled her finally to study in Paris in 1929–31.**
Senga Nengudi – Artist
Senga Nengudi emerged as part of a group of avant-garde African-American artists active in Los Angeles and New York in the 1970s and 1980s.
Elizabeth Catlett – Artist & Advocate for Social Change
In a career spanning more than 70 years, Elizabeth Catlett has created sculptures that celebrate the heroic strength and endurance of African-American and Mexican working-class women. With simple, clear shapes she evokes both the physical and spiritual essence of her subjects. Her hardy laborers and nurturing mothers radiate both power and a timeless dignity and calm. Whether working in wood, stone, bronze, or clay, Catlett reveals an extraordinary technical virtuosity, a natural ability to meld her curving female forms with the grain, whorls, color, or luster of her chosen medium. The beauty of her subjects is matched by the beauty she reveals in her sculptural materials.**
Read more Elizabeth Catlett – Artist & Advocate for Social Change
Sylvia Williams – Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art
Sylvia Williams directed installation of five inaugural exhibitions and more than 20 other exhibitions of traditional and modern art, including sculpture, photography, textiles and utilitarian objects. Under her direction, the museum acquired 845 works of art.*
Read more Sylvia Williams – Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art
Faith Ringgold – Painter, Writer, Speaker, Sculptor & Performance Artist
Since the early 1960s, Faith Ringgold has been known for her story quilts, politically charged paintings and prints, and illustrated children’s books. She has eloquently articulated a critical perspective on American identity through the lenses of the feminist and civil rights movements.***
Read more Faith Ringgold – Painter, Writer, Speaker, Sculptor & Performance Artist
Dr. Leslie King-Hammond: Artist, Art Historian and Curator
“I always made sure that all those people who thought they weren’t part of the opportunity to participate in the arts could find a way to become part of that experience,” said Leslie King Hammond, PhD, graduate dean emerita and founding director of the Center for Race and Culture at MICA. Her words are realized with the creation of the Leslie King Hammond Graduate Award. *
Read more Dr. Leslie King-Hammond: Artist, Art Historian and Curator
Valerie Cassel Oliver – Senoir Curator
Valerie Cassel Oliver, senior curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, has become a powerful force in contemporary art.
Dr. Deborah Willis – Historian of Photography
Dr. Deborah Willis is an artist, author and curator Deborah Willis's art and pioneering research has focused on cultural histories envisioning the black body, women and gender.
Dr. Kellie Jones – Curator & Art Historian
In 2011, Dr. Kellie Jones and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles curated an exhibition that chronicled the historic art scene in Los Angeles between 1960-1980s. The exhibition Now Dig This! was presented as part of Pacific Standard Time, a collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California, coming together to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene and how it became a new force in the art world. Read more here.
Dr. Samella Lewis – Artist & Art Historian
Samella Lewis, the first African American to earn a PHD in Fine Art and Art History, in creating published works about African American artists.
She is my inspiration and one of many people who inspire me.
Artist Spotlight: Angela Hennessy
Her current project, The School of the Dead, is a program for the decolonization of death and grief through the radical inquiry of aesthetic and social practices that mediate the boundary between the living and the dead.
She leads workshops and lectures nationally. Recent bay area talks and performances include The School of the Dead at CTRL+SHIFT Artists Collective; You’re Going to Die’s When They Died; IDEO’s Reimagine End of Life; Disclose Silence: We See Violence; Dead Black at Nook Gallery.
Spoken Art: Audacious IAM
Her art is exhibited through words on the page, performance and film in the attempt to transform, dissect and explore the intersection of blackness, queer identity, fragility and being a woman in America and beyond. As a queer black female artist, she has given and hopes to continue to provide her community with a platform for dialogue, social change and transformation through artistic creation.
