Category: Museums
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-27: Ebony Patterson
Last year I took a class with the Sotheby’s Institute of Arts where a fellow student shared the work of Ebony Patterson, and I have not forgotten their work since. One particular piece stands out to me as one that honors the past while challenging the viewer to see the present. In Patterson’s 2014 performance…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-19: Noah Davis “The Imitation of Wealth”
Noah Davis’ storefront installation titled “Imitation of Wealth” is nearing the end of its 5 month run at MOCA Grand. If you haven’t seen it, you have 3 days left, it’s free and it’s a fascinating work. The installation is housed in a small vacant conference room space across from the museum’s gift shop and is…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-16: A Tale of Two Countries in Glenn Ligon’s “Double America”
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” As Dickens used literary parallelism in the opening sentence of “A Tale of Two Cities”, Glenn Ligon used a simple form visual parallelism that taps into today’s political discourse in a very profound way. “it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-13-14: Malick Sidibé & Chris Ofili
Malick Sidibé’s work was prominent in the 1960’s and 1970’s when Mali gained its independence from the French and subsequently transitioned into and out of socialism. This cultural transformation became an underlying theme in Sidibé’s work. I love how his photography captures the exuberance of youth in Bamako-they are some of the most endearing photos…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-9: Brandan Odums & Noirlinians Usher in New Wave of Art in NOLA
Laissez le bon temps rouler! I’ve got New Orleans on my mind, so I thought I’d use today’s post to shine a light on the art that’s being made in the Crescent City today. Steeped in tradition, plagued by disaster and portrayed as a crown jewel of urban renewal, New Orleans is a multifaceted and deeply…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-8: Brenna Youngblood
Moody Mondays beg for a beautifully moody piece. Brenna Youngblood’s work combines expressionist and textural techniques with her formal background in photography. She takes found pieces of everyday objects like discarded paper bags, tree shaped car fresheners and photographs and applies them to canvas. Her paintings embody that point of collision between color field painting and abstraction. Youngblood’s 2015 Project 50 Series explored…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-7: Thornton Dial
Thornton Dial, “Stars of Everything”, 2004. Photo credit: Souls Grown Deep Today I’m highlighting an artist I wrote about for my second site TONDI. TONDI hosts digital exhibitions and explores broader social themes relating to contemporary art, music and design. I recently wrote a piece about Thornton Dial that was a commentary on how arts writers categorized him as an artist, but for…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-4: James Van Der Zee
James Van Der Zee was a prolific photographer documenting Harlem in the 1920’s and 1930’s with work that earned him the unofficial title of “Photographer of the Harlem Renaissance.” With a mission to highlight middle class life, his work featured portraits of black New Yorkers, showing a side of life that was virtually invisible outside the African American community. He was very…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-3: Njideka Akunyili Crosby
“Ask the ‘Why’, it’s not enough to say ‘it’s beautiful.’ “~Njideka Akunyili Crosby “Beautiful” is exactly how I described Crosby’s show at the Hammer in November. There are so many layers to her work it’s hard to focus on one aspect of it. I now realize that in many ways that is the point. On the surface…
Colony Little, Culture Shock Art 