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Artist a Day Challenge (2) Samella Lewis
In 1920’s New Orleans a young Samella Lewis first picked up a paint brush and through it she found her voice in an environment that didn’t encourage speaking one’s mind. “It might get me in trouble”, Lewis explains in a 2006 interview, “and so I had to find a way to express my feelings.” What originally began as a private expression, Samella…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2017
Back again! Today marks the 3rd edition of my Artist a Day challenge! During Black History Month I share daily posts featuring African-American artists and artists of African descent throughout the diaspora. In 2017 I will focus on artists who have committed to promoting and amplifying the artistic voices of others. They may be mentors, organizers, writers, scholars, curators,…
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Artist a Day Challenge (1): Ruth Waddy
In the fall of 1962 a group of black artists gathered in the back of Safety Savings and Loan’s community room. Brought together by a 53-year-old woman with no formal knowledge of art and limited resources, Ruth Waddy’s pitch to the group was a simple one: Her goal was to create a juried art show at a…
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Ellis Island- 125 Years Later
I am not so blinded by my own history that I cannot see, appreciate or understand the complex journeys of others. What’s happening now was foreshadowed so very long ago but only now some have chosen to wake up. I know this realization doesn’t make today less hurtful, but I find myself wondering how and why the decisions…
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“So Be It, See To It.”
Yesterday’s post on Radio Imagination at the Armory Center for the Arts focused on one artist’s creative interpretation of Octavia Butler’s famous novels, Kindred. The show also featured digital snapshots of Butler’s papers currently cataloged at the Huntington Library in Pasadena. Manuscripts, character sketches, childhood stories, and journal entries all provide us with an expositive look into Butler’s creative process including…
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Octavia Butler’s Radio Imagination
One of the best books I read in 2016 was Kindred by Octavia Butler and one of the most powerful essays I read in 2016 was “Broken Defaced and Unseen: the Hidden Black Female Figures of Western Art”, by Robin Coste Lewis. One work explored time travel, slavery and the black female body while the other takes the…
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Truth Sellers: My Thoughts on Loss, 2016 & Lucrative Appropriation
We’re finally closing out 2016 and I know am not alone in saying this: I’m tired. Last month I saw this Sam Durant looming over one of the LACMA galleries as diners were eating al fresco in the courtyard enjoying wine at Ray’s and Stark Bar. Around the same time my Instagram feed was flooded with Basel pictures, including Durant’s popular “End…
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A Culture Shock Art Gift Guide
Let’s be honest. It’s really my wish list…Champagne wishes on a beer budget. Cheers! ~ C Links to Featured Designers/Artists/Writers: Chloe´ Joe Purse Building Block Coin Dumpling, Bucket Bag Marni Blinky Wallet La Californienne Vintage Black Glamour Ricky Powell John McLaughlin, images from LACMA Ellsworth Kelly
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In Memoriam: The Legacy of David Mancuso
In San Francisco in the 1990’s, the club scene fell into one of two camps: the heavily promoted, large scale parties at Club Townsend and the Sound Factory or the smaller word-of-mouth underground parties like Informal Nation, the Beer Cellar and Sophies, (Raves rested somewhere between the two). My world revolved around the underground. You wouldn’t hear about…
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The Price of Passage: Betye Saar at Roberts & Tilton
The human brain works as a binary computer and can only analyze the exact information-based zeros and ones (or black and white). Our heart is more like a chemical computer that uses fuzzy logic to analyze information that can’t be easily defined in zeros and ones. ~Naveen Jain One world deals in absolutes: “Black vs White”…
Colony Little, Culture Shock Art 