Tag: Mapping Midpoints
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Artist a Day: Mark Bradford
Jack Whitten, Mark Bradford’s friend, and artistic inspiration loved jazz. When reflecting on his evolving improvisational process with paint, Whitten once commented to the Walker that “The person who got me trapped in all of this was John Coltrane.” Some of Whitten’s favorite albums included Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and John Coltrane’s Blue Train,…
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Artist a Day: Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson’s work body of multi-media work is so diverse it’s too hard to single out just one work for discussion, but I’m picking a piece she created in 2016 that I recently saw at the Tate Modern. Then and Now is an appropriated photo from the Detroit riots of 1967—a screen-printed tableau that’s split…
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Artist a Day: Njideka Akunyili Crosby
From the L.A. Times: “Njideka is an artist who has the capacity to really bring together worlds that may not stand in unison. Which is to say the continental African experience and that of black folks living in diaspora,” says Jamillah James, curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2015, when James…
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Artist a Day: Purvis Young
In light of the recent Town Halls and discussions taking place between our youth and our anemic leadership on gun control, I am inspired by this particular moment that they have seized. Their work taps into a long legacy of youth advocates selflessly serving as catalysts for change. While we applaud these current efforts to…
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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: 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: Derrick Adams
Derrick Adams’ collage work reminds me of the elaborate mosaics of Romare Beardon. I get delightfully lost in them. The artist currently has a show running at the Museum of Arts and Design called Sanctuary, that draws inspiration from the Jim Crow era Green Books, which were essential travel guides for African-Americans traveling…
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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 