Category: Art/Culture
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Artist a Day: Alexandra Bell
“Words work as release–well-oiled doors opening and closing between intention, gesture. A pulse in a neck, the shiftiness of the hands, an unconscious blink, the conversations you have with your eyes translate everything and nothing. What will be needed, what goes unfelt, unsaid-what has been duplicated, redacted here, redacted there, altered to hide or disguise—words…
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Artist a Day: Lubaina Himid
In many ways, Lubaina Himid’s art has helped me synthesize my thoughts and observations on London after my extended visit there this month. She’s been creating art for over 35 years and was recently awarded the Turner Prize by the Tate in 2017. As both the oldest recipient and the first black woman to receive…
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Artist a Day: Lezley Saar
“Cabinets of Curiosities” are small collections of ephemera curated by antiquarians and naturalists who used objects “to tell stories about the wonders and oddities of the natural world.” These collections of skulls, specimens, botanical sketches, and other flights of fancy were popularized during the 19th-century Victorian era and were displayed in small spaces…
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Artist a Day: David Hammons
It’s NBA All-Star Weekend here in L.A. (cue my extended eye roll) Much like my Superbowl post, this is as close to basketball as I want to get. Here are two examples of Hammons’ basketball drawings created from a charcoal covered basketball that’s repeatedly bounced on a sheet of clean…
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Artist a Day: Khadija Saye
I spent some time in London recently and while there I wondered if the U.K. celebrates Black History Month-it turns out they do in October! My Artist a Day profiles have never been limited to U.S. artists so, in light of my recent travels, I thought I would highlight an artist whose life was tragically cut…
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Artist a Day: Lorraine Hansberry
In 1957, a 27-year-old Lorraine Hansberry was busy writing a play when out of sheer exhaustion and frustration she threw the manuscript into the trash. Two years later that discarded text became a theatrical hit when a Raisin in the Sun premiered on Broadway in 1959 and paved the way for Hansberry’s highly decorated career as…
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Artist a Day: Amy Sherald
There is a confident sense of self in the subjects of Amy Sherald’s portraits whose gaze is as deliberate as their self-assured stance. They are dressed in sharp, bright colors with smart styling that merges retro and modern aesthetics into a style that’s not easily pegged to a specific genre. One painting features a young…
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Artist a Day: Rico Gaston
I love the graphic design elements in Rico Gaston’s paintings. My favorites include an ongoing series that marries collage and colored pencil on paper in images that radiate off the page. The black and white images of musicians, writers, entertainers, and activists are augmented by bold, colorful lines that amplify the subject’s energy.…
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Artist a Day: Romare Bearden
Looking at Romare Bearden’s Sea Nymph reminded me of the underwater world created by Ellen Gallagher. Bearden’s collage works transports viewers to a vast array of worlds both real and supernatural. His work deserves a much larger post, but I invite you to get lost in the images found on the Romare Bearden…
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Artist a Day: Hilton Als, Nothing Personal
“We have, it seems to me, a very curious sense of reality-or rather perhaps, I should say, a striking addiction to irreality.” James Baldwin, Nothing Personal, 1964. The book “Nothing Personal”, a collaboration between writer James Baldwin and photographer Richard Avedon, had an instrumental impact on a young Hilton Als growing up in Brooklyn.…
Colony Little, Culture Shock Art 