Wednesday, December 11, 2013
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.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
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
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
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
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
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
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
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)
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Week 9: Inspiration & Repost
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.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Week 8: Repost
About Glenn Ligon
Glenn Ligon was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1960. Ligon’s paintings and sculptures examine cultural and social identity through found sources—literature, Afrocentric coloring books, photographs—to reveal the ways in which the history of slavery, the civil rights movement, and sexual politics inform our understanding of American society. Ligon appropriates texts from a variety of literary writers including Walt Whitman, Zora Neal Hurston, Gertrude Stein, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison, as well from more popular sources such as the comedian Richard Pryor. In Ligon's paintings, the instability of his medium—oil crayon used with letter stencils—transforms the texts he quotes, making them abstract, difficult to read, and layered in meaning, much like the subject matter that he appropriates. In other works that feature silkscreen, neon, and photography, Ligon threads his own image and autobiography into symbols that speak to collective experiences. “It’s not about me,” he says. “It’s about we.” Glenn Ligon received a BA from Wesleyan University (1982) and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (1985). He has received numerous awards, including the United States Artists Fellowship (2010); Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize from the Studio Museum in Harlem (2009); Skowhegan Medal for Painting (2006); John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2003); Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (1998); and Visual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1989, 1991). His works are in the public collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Tate Modern; Walker Art Center; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. Glenn Ligon lives and works in New York City.
Week 8: Inspiration
This week's inspiration is just a collection three pictures that I feel help to narrow down my project to the essence of what it is. The role of what past slavery has played to the dying of our youth from violence to one another. These are the types of images I pull from when I start to think about creating different pieces.
Week 8: Progress
This week I worked more on the "Looney Geographics" cover and the second one was the end result. The color choice yellow was made to look more like the actual National Geographics magazine. Also asking the question could blake have been the founders of such an intelligent civilization? That answer would plainly be yes, but that Looney Toons character could never produce anything of worth.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Week 7: Inspiration and Repost
This is video is further inspiration for my project. Just a more visual look at what the reality is for blacks in America even still today. Somethings still hold true to what media has tried to portray us as. Te cartoon can speak for itself.
Week 7: Progress
My progress for this week is called "Looney Geographics." I came across the magazine National Geographic in 2009 about their being proof that for a period of time the Pharaohs were actually black. Now this rubbed me the wrong way because in Egypt the Pharaohs have always been apart of Africa they have always been black. It is a disgrace to think other wise which contributes a lot to why most young people don't know African history. Our history has been hidden for so long that we don't even really know who we are as people of African descent. Now what we do know is what many children's cartoons like the Looney toons have taught us is that black people were nothing more than big lipped ignorant people. From these cartoons black generations have been taught that they are lay and that the only thing Africa was was just a black whole of sorts. So what I wanted to do was combine the two as both a comic source and academic source for the evidence that further perpetuates the plight of black youth.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Week 6: Repost
About Mark Bradford
Mark Bradford was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1961. He received a BFA (1995) and MFA (1997) from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. Bradford transforms materials scavenged from the street into wall-size collages and installations that respond to the impromptu networks—underground economies, migrant communities, or popular appropriation of abandoned public space—that emerge within a city. Drawing from the diverse cultural and geographic makeup of his southern Californian community, Bradford’s work is as informed by his personal background as a third-generation merchant there as it is by the tradition of abstract painting developed worldwide in the twentieth century. Bradford’s videos and map-like, multilayered paper collages refer not only to the organization of streets and buildings in downtown Los Angeles, but also to images of crowds, ranging from civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s to contemporary protests concerning immigration issues. Mark Bradford has received many awards, including the Bucksbaum Award (2006); the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2003); and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2002). He has been included in major exhibitions at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2006); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2003); REDCAT, Los Angeles (2004); and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2001). He has participated in the twenty-seventh Bienal de São Paulo (2006); the Whitney Biennial (2006); and "inSite: Art Practices in the Public Domain," San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico (2005). Bradford lives and works in Los Angeles.
Week 6: Inspiration
![]() |
| Black Venus |
![]() |
| Game Recognize Game |
![]() |
| Merchant Portraits |
Week 6: Progress
This the Illustrator version of "This Cage That I'm In". I wanted to make this scene much darker, to give the viewer the feeling of isolation. I wanted to also portray the character as one who is emotionally broken due to his circumstances. He grabs onto the bars, but he cannot break free, therefore you have the cage. But this can also be a mental thing as well because their are many young blacks who have been trapped mentally by their surroundings. What is to be understood is that these bars are not by this person's own doing. He has been put into this situation due to other problems that could shape a person's life for the worst.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Week 5: Repost
About Trenton Doyle Hancock
Trenton Doyle Hancock was born in 1974 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Raised in Paris, Texas, Hancock earned his BFA from Texas A&M University, Commerce, and his MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia. Hancock’s prints, drawings, and collaged-felt paintings work together to tell the story of the Mounds—a group of mythical creatures that are the tragic protagonists of the artist’s unfolding narrative. Each new work by Hancock is a contribution to the saga of the Mounds, portraying the birth, life, death, afterlife, and even dream states of these half-animal, half-plant creatures. Influenced by the history of painting, especially Abstract Expressionism, Hancock transforms traditionally formal decisions—such as the use of color, language, and pattern—into opportunities to create new characters, develop sub-plots, and convey symbolic meaning. Hancock’s paintings often rework Biblical stories that the artist learned as a child from his family and local church community. Balancing moral dilemmas with wit and a musical sense of language and color, Hancock’s works create a painterly space of psychological dimensions. Trenton Doyle Hancock was featured in the 2000 and 2002 Whitney Biennial exhibitions, one of the youngest artists in history to participate in this prestigious survey. His work has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; and Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami. The recipient of numerous awards, Hancock lives and works in Houston, where he was a 2002 Core Artist in Residence at the Glassell School of Art of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Week 5: Inspiration
![]() |
| The Bad Promise |
![]() |
| With The Money I Have Left |
![]() |
| The Shame Game |
Week 5: Progress
For progress this week, I revisited the sketch "Staring Down A Future." My goal was to combine Illustrator and charcoal together to see what the result would be. The idea was to make the picture more powerful and also maintain of the grit that charcoal has. So I kept the pattern of the charcoal in the background and added a filter to soften it. I like how the tears came out in the subject because the whole point was to convey the sense of distress a situation like this would bring. This occurrence happen in my community more times that I can count. So how would one react if they had to face a situation on a daily?
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Week 4: Repost
Max Sansing and Chicago Street Art (Part 1)
[originally posted 2/26/10]
Ben Majoy
For a city this size, with an above ground public train system and a rich history of sub cultural expressionism (The Blues, characters like Kanye West, and hmmm… the Squids), I can’t understand why these brick walls aren’t more interesting. After spending time in Berlin this past summer, I appreciate how inspiring a city becomes when street art is part of the urban landscape. The fact that Chicago is lacking this genuinely worries me.
I wanted to know why Chicago’s street art scene was so shockingly lackluster, so I sought out ex-graffiti writer turned fine artist, Max Sansing. Max has been responsible for some of the more interesting murals around south side Chicago and once upon a time, was probably responsible for some of the graffiti that you gawked at, staring out the window of the red line. According to Max, this “once upon a time”, revolved heavily around the Hyde Park hip-hop scene, once a beacon for street artists in the same way that Kreuzberg in Berlin is now. I went down to Max’s stomping grounds on 79th Street in Avalon Park to talk about Chicago graffiti and street art. It was the kind of conversation you might hear two calloused old men have over a game of chess and a few glasses of scotch. He was so damn interesting that I wanted to share some of the highlights.
Ben – Part of the reason that I wanted to talk to you about this stuff is because I don’t see a lot of graffiti around Chicago where I think other big cities around the world would have plastered their walls by now. What was the scene like in the nineties when you were growing up? Was there more of it?
Max – Man, I was fortunate to come up at the time I did. When I was in high school back around ‘95, the hip-hop scene in Hyde Park was huge! The real black hip-hop scene was like in its golden era man. You had tons of kids who were doing graffiti, break dancing, mc’ing, and dj’ing. All these different Hyde park graffiti crews and would go up to the point right off of the lake front and show their sketch books and stuff. It gave me a chance to get out the neighborhood I grew up in. I grew up in Avalon Park. It was pretty much the typical hood feel. It was a decent middle class neighborhood, but it was right off of 79th street. I’ve had a lot of friends who’ve gotten popped off over there. I got a chance to get out of there through the hip-hop scene. I guess that’s something that hits with the graffiti thing. Hip-hop culture in Chicago has always been competing with the gang culture for what the youth wanted to get into. When I was growing up in Chicago in the early 90’s the gang scene was huge. If I didn’t know people, and I didn’t get out of the neighborhood, I would have been into some bullshit. That’s why I thank god for the hip hop scene, for opening up my mind.
Max – Man, I was fortunate to come up at the time I did. When I was in high school back around ‘95, the hip-hop scene in Hyde Park was huge! The real black hip-hop scene was like in its golden era man. You had tons of kids who were doing graffiti, break dancing, mc’ing, and dj’ing. All these different Hyde park graffiti crews and would go up to the point right off of the lake front and show their sketch books and stuff. It gave me a chance to get out the neighborhood I grew up in. I grew up in Avalon Park. It was pretty much the typical hood feel. It was a decent middle class neighborhood, but it was right off of 79th street. I’ve had a lot of friends who’ve gotten popped off over there. I got a chance to get out of there through the hip-hop scene. I guess that’s something that hits with the graffiti thing. Hip-hop culture in Chicago has always been competing with the gang culture for what the youth wanted to get into. When I was growing up in Chicago in the early 90’s the gang scene was huge. If I didn’t know people, and I didn’t get out of the neighborhood, I would have been into some bullshit. That’s why I thank god for the hip hop scene, for opening up my mind.
Do you think the scarcity of kids doing graffiti has anything to do with the fact that it’s so illegal? That may sound like a ridiculous question but…
I mean people are doing illegal shit all the fucking time, especially if they don’t have any cash dude. Here’s the thing. It’s not glamorous. If you go out and you see a dude sitting in a big ass truck with rims and or shit, he probably got it from rapping and selling drugs. When you’re a shorty who ain’t got shit, and you want to be accepted because you’re going through high school angst, the gang stuff is really appealing man. Then, on top of that, the only type of music you have on the radio is gangster stuff like Lil’ Wayne and Gucci man. It’s like the perfect storm. The ill thing with graffiti as a youth interest is that it’s an art form, so its going to lead them into something with different cultures as opposed to the whole dope boy (drug dealing) thing which is just going to lead you into bullshit.
Exactly dog. They’re not going to be trying to get their styles better. They aren’t going to learn to get can control. I invested a lot of time into the shit I know now through graffiti. I’ve got tons of books like this (shows me his sketch book). Each one was like two or three years of dedication – years of getting my craft together. Going out there, painting walls, learning from other graffiti writers. Spray cans aren’t an easy thing to use.
See, I think that if graffiti is ever going to be a part of Chicago, like it is in places like New York, Paris, or Berlin, I think that these kids need to see it done. They need to know that the time and effort pays off in big ways. If kids see your or other artist’s graf work around the city, you might get some more young Hyde Park style graffiti enthusiasts. It might make this city a lot more visually exciting.
See that’s the thing that my buddy and me are on right now. We keep beating the drum and doing these murals. It’s going to do something. Just these two past years, we’ve had these protégés. I was texting this dude the other day, these high school kids who are just like coming up looking at our shit. They told me that there’s a lot of kids out there that want to know about the hip hop scene from back in the day because it’s become kind of like a myth now. They want to find out who came out of that scene and who’s doing what now. I think that’s interesting. I think it’s a small glimmer of interest in the whole thing.
Week 4: Progress
The first piece is an alternate edition of the piece "Born Under Another Name." I took it into Photoshop and played around with the filters. I like this one because it gives me the feel of pollution in the mother's womb. When a word is placed upon you like that of a nigga, it can only pollute the perception of who you are. Now in todays world it is a term of endearment, yet in my eyes it still produces the same effect of self-decay. The umbilical chord seems to fill up with a dark fluid which would represent the streets the negative streets that I live in.
African American Origins is also another alternative piece I did in Illustrator. This book explains how African Americans were viewed in the past, which still effects some of us today. We were viewed as animals with no civility and no understanding of the world. Nothing more than a nuisance to the world of "high society." As of right now in most schools in American African history really has no meaning even though we come from an extraordinary people. Even though history books are not as blatant with such words today, they still leave the impression that African really were not all that innovative other than the Egyptian civilization; which is a travesty in light of Africa's rich history.
Week 4: Inspiration
This weeks inspiration is from Max Sansing. I actually was able to meet him last year and I have to say his oil paintings are very inspiring. I really love how he uses colors, which makes his pieces even more vibrant. His pieces have a depth to them that I really appreciate. His color usage to me brings out the beauty or the emotion of the object.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Week 3: Repost - The Trenchant Art of James Pate
http://www.daytoncitypaper.com/the-trenchant-art-of-james-pate/
The Trenchant Art of James Pate
Kin Killin’ Kin and Attack
By Jud Yalkut
The masterful African American artist James Pate was born in Birmingham, Alabama, but raised in Cincinnati where he earned a scholarship to attend the Art Academy there through a Corbett Award. After attending Central State University and continuing to self-educate himself, he has since been a recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence grant and two Montgomery County Individual Artist Fellowships.
Widely know for his idiosyncratic Techno-Cubism style which fuses immaculate realism with spatial abstraction, Pate has, since 2000, worked on a powerful series of large charcoal drawings which decry the horrible problem of violence among black youth and the resultant terrorism. “In the middle of producing the first piece,” he writes, “I decided that as a personal, private protest I would continue to compose a rendering as long as these insidious acts continue.”
The Kin Killin’ Kin series has resulted in twelve outstanding pieces now on view at the EbonNia Gallery in Dayton through February 29, and the entire series has been given integral life by being acquired by the prestigious African American art collection of Arthur Primas. Curator Willis “Bing” Davis began discussing the exhibition of these works in 2008 in which “a master visual artist… had directed his artistic vision to one of the most critical social ills of our time … youth violence.” Mounted at the gallery in the fall of 2011, the suite of monumental charcoal works was visited by numerous church, school and governmental units ranging from youth groups to university art classes, with great demand encouraging its 2012 extension.
Writer Janyce Glasper has commented eloquently on Pate’s work: “Moving poetry, these realistic, fairly large charcoal drawings engage not just the viewer’s eyes, but the actively processing mind. One can almost taste the salty tears from visceral sadness … Touch the lifeless body that no longer has a heartbeat … In the aftermath of senseless bloodshed, there is nothing a viewer can do.”
Pate equates the senseless killers as Black equivalents of Ku Klux Klan terrorism with African American community realization that we “in a strange fruit kind of way, are doing the business of the KKK with our Black-on-Black violence.” The artist stresses this comparison with the depiction of “brothers in pointed hood in the ‘hood’.” In “Your History” the “king of the drug trade” aims a magnified drive-by gun at a traditional Yoruba head from West Africa, and “K, 2 Da K, 2 Da K, II” treats misguided leadership among black males in hooded robes, baring burning crosses and threatening guns. Bullets are masked in small rectangles as they are suspended threateningly in space.
The heroics of black union soldiers are symbolized in “Defenders of the Corner” but perverted by the current tendency to defend the corners of the drug trade. Pate questions: “What happened between the Civil War era and the present day that causes this degree of dysfunction?” Basing “Ku Klux Sphinx” on the legendary shooting off of the nose of Egypt’s Sphinx by Napoleon’s troops, Pate shows the debris falling onto a young girl jumping rope, an instance of “the innocent bystander as victim.” He relates this also to bombardment by debris of the victims of 9/11.
“3K” honors Pate’s favorite DJ, Jam Master J of the group Run DMC, gunned down in his studio and here pictured on the jersey of a masked current DJ, while giant gun hands protrude into the foreground from passing cars with hooded drivers. “Your History II” captures the mutual destruction of competing gunmen against a background drawn from scenes dating back to the civil rights era. “Your History III” plays on the double meaning of noble history and the water soaking of protestors against “the slang phrase that signifies the ending of one’s life.” Pate further equates the senseless killer with a fractured Sphinx-nosed “Adolf Jackson” with Hitler’s equal determination to terminate the black race as well as the Jews, and also decries the onslaught of music with violent lyrics which encourages the mobster psychology in “K 2 Da K, 2 Da K” with a hooded background character declaiming into a mike while holding a gun to the temple of another.
The large oil painting “Turn of Endearment” projects hope around a multi-faceted character that progresses in rainbow tones away from a life of despair to the embracing of a youth with the definition of Sankofa (“looking back at their rich ancestry in order to receive the guidance to move forward”).
A concurrent series by Pate, which decries violence towards women called Attack, with rich monumental black nudes threatened by military warplanes, is showing at the Works on Paper Gallery of Sinclair Community College through March 7. This series also allows the viewer to appreciate the prodigious feeling and technique of this master artist whose works enhance the lifestyle and consciousness of our community.
The EbonNia Gallery is located at 1135 W. Third Street in the Wright-Dunbar area of Dayton. Gallery hours are 11a.m.-5p.m. or by appointment at (937) 223-2290. The Sinclair Works on Paper Gallery is located on the fourth floor of Building 13 at the corner of Fifth and Perry Streets in Dayton. Gallery hours are 8a.m.-8p.m. Monday-Thursday, 8a.m.-5p.m. Friday and 8a.m.-3p.m. Saturday. For more information visit www.sinclair.edu/arts/galleries.
Reach DCP visual art critic Jud Yalkut at JudYalkut@DaytonCityPaper.com.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)





















.jpg)





