Week 15 - Final Critique

Today is the day after critique it went really well. The suggested I use my music as a performance piece. I think I just might do that but I will have to make sure I go to the studio during the break to get it done. Also I will be working on a website to show young black youth who are trying to do something with themselves to show that what the inner-city produces is not all bad. We do have those who continue to fight to make their surroundings better. I want to showcase that inspire others so that they would want to push forward and not become victim to the streets.  So that is my plan for senior sem.

Week 14 - Progress

I revisited "Fighting the Stereotype" to put the lyrics into the picture to give the embodiment of the stereotype a voice. If a stereotype of black people was living and breathing what would he say. What would he want from you? It would be very shocking to see the extremes he would speak of. The lyrics for the hook would go:

Look at my teeth see the greed stained with them
Look at my seed as he screams from his prison
Got a need for the feed trigger finger itching
Man I love when they bleed, see the ghetto is my prison
Are you my stereotype? Are you my stereotype?
Be my stereotype
Climb up in my womb let me feast down tonight

Week 13 - Progress

This piece I call the "Black Woman's Eyes". Its about the plight of black women in the black community. The piece deals with being the head in a single parent home, the death of the male role in the house hold. For instance, a grandfather being hung in the deep south and a father being racially profiled being sent to prison unjustly. The black woman is very powerful in the inner-city yet she is looked down upon by even males in the community. She takes care of everyone and sees so much of the devastation of her community. Yet she remains the pillar of the community when the male part becomes absent. She bares the pain and persecution all in the same breath.  Its kind of my tribute to black women like my mother and others. the lyrics would go:

If you could see in her eyes
Then you would see in her mind
All of the hurt remains in plenty
Lady don't worry your soul is what I see

Week 12 - Progress

This piece is called "I Need You To Love Me." It about two black children and their life in the inner-city. This piece deals with single parent homes, gang violence, degradation, the loss of hopes and dreams. The big factor in this piece is that the boy does not make it out of this situation and he dies succumbing to societal pressures. The young girl survives, but carries the baggage of being seen as a sex object. Also she is left to raise children all on her own because most black males do not survive psychologically or physically in our inner-cities.The Hook goes:

I need you to love me, I want to be whole
I need you to love me, please don't let me go

Week 11 - Progress

I am now kind of finding my style in which I will use for my senior seminar. Its taken a little while but I think I will settle with charcoal. This piece again is called, "Born Under Another Name."  I am now starting to write lyrics to songs that I will be creating to breathe more life into my pieces. The piece is about being labeled by society before you even make it out of the womb. There are already set expectations to what you can reach and society makes it seem like those are the only choices we have. The lyrics are:

Sleep in the womb, no expectance of life
Stamped to be doom with no presence of mind
All I want to do is live and to shine
Pray that we make it to see the sun
I am human I am one (repeated)

Week 10: A Reminder - My Vision

I have been contemplating about how deep I want to go with my artwork as of late. I think that sometimes when things are too tender to touch those are very things must be brought out and discussed. As much as I feel a pressing deep within me to speak what is true of those who live in poverty, I seem to back up. What is obvious is that everyone does not get a chance to speak or to artistically create what they see in this world; many are either silenced or too scared for the task. I on the other hand lay between the middle, I have not been silenced, but yet a fear remains. How will people perceive me and what will they do when truth is spoken? I do not speak of a violence being committed upon my person, but the feeling of being ignored.  To reach out into the depths of my soul and share a personal experience with those who may see my art. Yet at the same time, these moments become brushed away due to the "get over it" mentality of America. What effects those in my neighborhood is deeply rooted in the harsh realities of America since the beginning.

In spite of this I ask myself, what is a thoughtful man with a self closed mouth. Does not the heights of ideas and true change need a voice that will produce ripe fruit for the mind? I am comfortable, but more so convicted by my own silence. This is not a moment of clarity, but the constant realization that honesty first and foremost is artist's duty; when they want to capture the pure nature of a people. So I write this to myself and anyone who would read it to never be afraid when truth is at the tip of your tongue. If for one moment you bite it to not speak, for fear of the thoughts of others, your mouth may never open to speak truth again. I do not exaggerate because so much has happen to people all over the world simply because they did not speak. So I say to myself and to you, to no longer hender your moments of deep inspiration for the sake of an audience. Be what God created you to be. Of all things, truth does not agree with us the most because it reveals. It opens up a place within man that he has long shielded himself away from. It begs the question of how twisted our morality has become. I can no longer afford to comfortable when I see destruction going on around me on a daily basis. The heart opens to what the mind will not yield to, which is the freedom to express the realities of life. And if I am to call myself a man I must give voice to my artistic pains, so that others may possibly be changed by them. So I insist, watch as I struggle with myself to give the best of my painful experiences. All that I ask you (myself) is that you will be changed and strengthened by them. After all, how do you give birth to a better self if you do not labor in some pain? God bless.

Week 9: Inspiration & Repost

Kerry James Marshall

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About Kerry James Marshall

Kerry James Marshall was born in 1955 in Birmingham, Alabama, and was educated at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, from which he received a BFA, and an honorary doctorate (1999). The subject matter of his paintings, installations, and public projects is often drawn from African-American popular culture, and is rooted in the geography of his upbringing: “You can’t be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and grow up in South Central [Los Angeles] near the Black Panthers headquarters, and not feel like you’ve got some kind of social responsibility. You can’t move to Watts in 1963 and not speak about it. That determined a lot of where my work was going to go,” says Marshall. In his "Souvenir" series of paintings and sculptures, he pays tribute to the civil rights movement with mammoth printing stamps featuring bold slogans of the era (“Black Power!”) and paintings of middle-class living rooms, where ordinary African-American citizens have become angels tending to a domestic order populated by the ghosts of Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and other heroes of the 1960s. In "RYTHM MASTR," Marshall creates a comic book for the twenty-first century, pitting ancient African sculptures come to life against a cyberspace elite that risks losing touch with traditional culture. Marshall’s work is based on a broad range of art-historical references, from Renaissance painting to black folk art, from El Greco to Charles White. A striking aspect of Marshall’s paintings is the emphatically black skin tone of his figures—a development the artist says emerged from an investigation into the invisibility of blacks in America and the unnecessarily negative connotations associated with darkness. Marshall believes, “You still have to earn your audience’s attention every time you make something.” The sheer beauty of his work speaks to an art that is simultaneously formally rigorous and socially engaged. Marshall lives in Chicago.

Links
Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Koplin Del Rio Gallery, Culver City
Kerry James Marshall on the Art21 Blog

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