Paradigms of Structure and Change: David Carlson

Other Side of Empty, 2016, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 60″ x 72″
Paradigms of Structure and Change: David Carlson
March 11 – April 23, 2017

Working with the unique qualities of painting, drawing, and video, David Carlson engages the poetics of geometry and design through the collision of gestural lines, rounded forms, and layered imagery. Spanning over several years, the bodies of work featured in Paradigms of Structure and Change are in conversation with one another as investigations into the importance of experience and reflection within the process of intuitive creation.    Khadija Adell, Curator

paintings | video | artist’s talk | david carlson
 

paintings

video


 

One year, one month, one week, one day, one hour, one minute.

Through the act of abstract painting I merge time and energy into compositions that reflect unknown circumstance. This is important. I begin with a simple group of thoughts or perimeters that initiate the overall concept. (platform.) Totemic force, unidentified object, nature, music, poetry, diverse cultural experiences through travel define the process. Mine is not to dissect and explain but to experience and reflect.
Each painting has it’s own duration and this perception is automatically built into it through the process of exploration. This is something I have been working and struggling with for many years.

In my studio I ask myself, “What is the nature of reality?” This is my constant thought while I paint. The tension between opposing paradigms of structure and change continually challenge me to look for different ways to understand this question. By using abstraction, my paintings have an undertone of geometry, I use the word poetically. The aesthetic includes a painterly approach, precision handling and an underlying sense of design through collision, tension and opposition.

On the surface, there are recognizable shapes, mostly circles, but also rounded forms and lines that create movement and structure in the space. The physical nature of circles become fixed in space between the more gestural lines and layers that create movement and a sense of time. The painting’s layered surface include heavy texture, scraped areas, fresh paint and milky veils, which allude to the formation or destruction of random sequence. Without having specific objects or trappings of identifiable ‘real’ images, the paintings cross over perceptible boundaries locked to a specific meaning. This allows me to look directly at diverse ideas in an intuitive manner. The act of painting becomes the experience or ‘reality’ for the basis of the work. By combining abstract painting with concepts rooted in Taoist and Buddhist philosophy I have been constructing contemporary works that directly express the ever-changing quality of experience, time, and place. Zen

David Carlson

Take Me Away to the Stars


Shall It Declare Thy Truth? (detail), 2016

Take Me Away to the Stars: The Mystery, Magic, and Myth of Nat Turner

November 5, 2016 – February 18, 2017

artwork | artist’s talk | artist statement | curatorial statement

Take Me Away to the Stars, explores how violence is processed through escapism, religion and myth. Using the historic and mythological chronicles of Nat Turner’s historic slave rebellion, Stephen Towns constructs a contemporary story through drawings, paintings and quilts. read artist statement

Artwork

Artist Statement

Stephen Towns
Take Me Away to the Stars, explores how we process violence through escapism, religion and myth. Using the historic and mythological chronicles of Nat Turner’s rebellion, my visual narrative probes the effects this singular event had in solidifying the fear of Black Americans and the development of the “sub-human” black man ideology, yet the reality is black Americans are systematically shackled to a violent nation which half-heartedly embraces our bodies, minds and souls while reaping the benefits of our pain.

‘The Confessions of Nat Turner,’ scholarly articles on coping mechanisms and a visit to the Turner Rebellion sites, are the thesis for Take Me Away to the Stars. This research is the foundation to construct a contemporary story using patterns, shape, celestial imagery and quilting unfolding this very violent story through non-violent imagery without “escape” from reality.


Take Me Away to the Stars is a complement to my co-patriot series. Stars provides me an avenue to process all I have learned about the violence of American history and may possibly provide a framework on how to navigate and articulate the current anger and frustration that exists within Baltimore today following the Uprising of 2015 and indeed throughout the nation and the world.

Curatorial Statement

On the eve of August 21, 1831, Nat Turner led a rebellion against slavery in South Hampton County, Virginia. He was joined by a band of 70 armed slaves and freed blacks who traveled to an estimated 15 farms and bludgeoned every white man, woman, and child to be found. By the end of the 24-hour insurrection, 55-65 whites had been murdered. Out of retaliation for the attack, Turner and 21 of his conspirators were executed by hanging, others were transported from the region, and an estimated 200 innocent blacks were summarily killed.

Turner’s bloody revolt sent shock waves throughout the antebellum south. He was vilified by slaveholders who believed his act to be reprehensible; while being raised to apotheosis status by abolitionists in the north for sacrificing his life to end slavery.

Whether villain or hero, the question remains—given the cult of violence that existed during slavery was Turner justified in taking up arms against his oppressors?

In, Take Me Away to the Stars: The Mystery, Magic, and Myth of Nat Turner Stephen Towns explores the moral legitimacy and political efficacy of violent protest by blacks in their fight for freedom and equality. Turner’s life is the lens through which Towns examines how violence is processed through escapism and myth while investigating the role religion has played in the subjugation and liberation of black people.

Historical and mythological narratives and Towns’ imagination are the inspirations for paintings and quilts that take us on a visual journey from Turner’s childhood to the day of his execution. Towns masterfully constructs his commentary on violence employing a non-violent iconography where butterflies, celestial skies, halos, and magic acts, are metaphors for resilience, spirituality, perseverance, and escapism.

I will Fear No Evil

The story unfolds with Find Me a Constellation, a series of delicately painted portraits of enslaved children, offered by Towns as a tender reminder of those born as chattel. As a child, Turner impressed family and friends with an unusual sense of divine purpose. Town’s portrait, I will Fear No Evil imagines Turner as a small boy; the title, a reference to his deep religious convictions.






Black Sun

The Story Quilts chronicle Turner’s evolution from “special” child to the man driven by prophetic visions to lead the insurrection. Towns’ narrative quilts depict the enigmatic Turner under luminous night skies as he evolves from gifted child—to charismatic preacher—to the infamous leader of the slave revolt.






No Remembrance of Things
to Come

In the Black Magic series, magic is the metaphor for religion and survival. Towns’ paintings depict Turner and his wife, Cherry as magicians who deploy sorcery to escape the harsh realities of their existence. They are fueled by the quest for freedom and imbued with the power of God, as they find sanctuary in a world of illusions.






Shall It Declare Thy Truth?

Joy Cometh in the Morning is Towns’ homage to Turner and his combatants, who in the facing their execution, remain defiant. Paintings of the insurgents evoke intense emotions. Their penetrating gazes and clinched fists convey a resolute determination to live freely or dead by their own hands.






Birth of a Nation

In Birth of a Nation, Towns takes a departure from the Turner story to address the role of black women as “wet nurses” during the antebellum and post-antebellum period. A 13 star Revolutionary Flag meticulously hand stitched by Towns hangs above a soil, just inches from desecration. The flag serves as the backdrop for the archetype mammie figure with white baby suckling at her breast. Towns reveals the contradiction in men who hold the flag sacred while defiling and violating the black woman’s body.



Myrtis Bedolla, Curator

Reference: French, Scott. The Rebellious Slave: Nat Turner in American Memory. New York, NY. Houghton Mifflin Company. 2004

Lest We Forget

Lest We Forget

September 12- October 16, 2016

New York, New York: The Stop & Frisk Game Board, 2013 by Wesley Clark[/caption]The exhibition presented at Galerie Myrtis, Lest We Forget examines pivotal moments and figures in US history, as well as the everyday occurrences and unknown individuals that have impacted, to various degrees, the African American experience here, and by extension, throughout the world. Too often individuals, movements and ideas are discounted, overlooked or ‘smudged out’ in an attempt to lessen their societal and cultural agency and potency. What has come before is particularly poignant now, more than ever, and continues to reverberate in current issues , both progressive and problematic, such as Black Lives Matter and the examination of President Obama’s legacy in the final months of his administration.

Featured Artists: Larry Cook, Wesley Clark, Shaunte Gates, Delita Martin, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, Amber Robles-Gordon and Stan Squirewell

Curated by: Jarvis DuBois and Deirdre Darden
| artists’ talk |
New York, New York: The Stop & Frisk Game Board, 2013
by Wesley Clark

Artwork

To Be Black In White America – Artists Talk

More or Less, 2015, Archival print on semimatte paper 1/10, 33 1/3 x 50 in. (framed) by Wendel Patrick
More or Less, 2015, Archival print on semimatte paper 1/10, 33 1/3 x 50 in. (framed) by Wendel Patrick

 

To Be Black In White America

Artists Talk: July 24, 2016, 2:00 – 4:00 PM

RSVP REQUIRED (NO MORE SEATS AVAILABLE!)

Confirmed Artists

Wesley Clark
Linda Day Clark
Larry Cook (2016 Janet & Walter Sondheim finalist)
Nehemiah Dixon III
Wayson R. Jones
Wendel Patrick
Stephen Towns
 

About Exhibition

exhibition preview | about the artists

To Be Black in White America explores the politicization of the Black Identity in the United States. From legalized slavery to the most recent, hateful thing that Donald Trump said, a minority of Americans have been desperately and diligently fighting against a White power structure for equality throughout the nation’s relatively short history.

Exclamations comparing today’s events with those of the 1960’s are prevalent—from social media to the May 2015 cover of Time magazine, featuring the Freddie Gray protests. The truth is that we never left the Civil Rights Era completely in the past. Institutional racism and personal vitriol—which we have seen plenty of during the presidential campaigns—have always been present. They crop up when vile words provoke violence or when an act of violence incites protests.

While the subject matter surrounding White power structures is as vast as the Middle Crossing, the artists featured in this exhibition are able to identify and clearly express difficult but highly specific aspects of this struggle.

Galerie Myrtis and this exhibition are part of the 2016 Artscape Gallery Network

To Be Black In White America

The Dance, 2015, Archival print on semimatte paper 1/10, 33 1/3 x 50 in. (framed) by Wendel Patrick
The Dance, 2015, Archival print on semimatte paper 1/10, 33 1/3 x 50 in. (framed) by Wendel Patrick

To Be Black In White America

June 25 – July 30, 2016

Artwork

about the exhibition | about the artists


About the Exhibition

To Be Black in White America explores the politicization of the Black Identity in the United States. From legalized slavery to the most recent, hateful thing that Donald Trump said, a minority of Americans have been desperately and diligently fighting against a White power structure for equality throughout the nation’s relatively short history.

Exclamations comparing today’s events with those of the 1960’s are prevalent—from social media to the May 2015 cover of Time magazine, featuring the Freddie Gray protests. The truth is that we never left the Civil Rights Era completely in the past. Institutional racism and personal vitriol—which we have seen plenty of during the presidential campaigns—have always been present. They crop up when vile words provoke violence or when an act of violence incites protests.

Galerie Myrtis and this exhibition are part of the 2016 Artscape Gallery Network

About the Artists

Larry Cook was a finalist for the 11th annual Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize. He uses “photography, video, installation and text [to] examine identity, history and cultural symbolism.” His work challenges the notion of a ‘post-racial’ society. He takes a critical look at the “complex conditions of Black Americans.” The videos in this exhibition specifically examines Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of an integrated US, as expressed by his “I Have a Dream” speech and how far we have drifted from that vision.

Wesley Clark often focuses on the experience of young, Black males in America and the African Diaspora. His repeated use of targets in his art expresses the target that young, Black men feel is on them—asking them to behave a certain way, expecting them to fail and punishing them when they do. The works in his Open Season series are titled with the initials and age, date and state of death in, what Clark calls, “excessive response” incidents. Beginning with Trayvon Martin, Clark is tracking the Black men and women killed by police and other White “authorities.” While his subject matter is somber, the colorful tapestry created by Clark’s targets expresses the beauty of the people lost to such violence.

Linda Day Clark “is a community advocate working for change as an artist, educator and scholar.” Day Clark’s photograph North Avenue No. 24, from 1993, shows the then and continuing prevalence of and preference for the classic, White, blonde Barbie® doll. In Day Clark’s photograph, a young, Black girl smiles ear-to-ear as she shows off a doll in clothes and hairstyling that she has made herself. Earlier this year—over 20 years after Day Clark took her photograph on nearby North Avenue—Mattel® toys released Barbie® dolls with more varied appearances but whether they will take root with similarly diverse girls is yet to be determined.

Oletha DeVane is an accomplished multimedia artist who works in painting, printmaking, sculpture and video, often combining these elements in installations. Her influences include her faith, Greek mythology, Yoruba religion and biblical references. In this exhibition, she explores the ordeal of Henry “Box” Brown, the man who mailed himself to freedom in over a decade before the American Civil War.

 
Following the shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012, the slain teenager’s grey hoodie became an icon for racial profiling and wrongful death. Nehemiah Dixon III continues this conversation in his Suit of Armor series. He dipped hoodies in black epoxy resin and allowed them to cure so that they appear to contain a body. They are solid but ghostly. Their color assumes skin tone. They look like they should be protective, but we know that they are not. They look like they are being worn by a body, but that person is gone. Dixon’s hoodies are symbols of strife, loss, grief and mourning.

In 1997, Susan Goldman, a printmaker, began a series of work featuring the ‘Hottentot Venus.’ Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman from South Africa spent her adulthood displayed as a spectacle in 19th century human zoos. Even after her death, parts of her body were on display at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris until the 1970s. Her body was finally returned to South Africa and laid to rest in 2002. Although Baartman never came to the US, she is emblematic of the exploitation of the Black [especially female] body in both human zoos and modern media.

All of Curlee Holton’s prints featured in this exhibition were made in the early 1990s, but are so relevant to today’s racial climate that they could have been pulled, hot off the press yesterday. Man Man Meaning 1 and 2 speak to a shared belief in Christianity, but very different interpretations between White Supremacists and African Americans. Shoot’em Up provides images of Black-on-Black violence, but the red tip of the gun reminds us of the toy that 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by the Cleveland Police for carrying in a park. Promise reminds us of the numerous young men, with big dreams for the future, who have been taken by gun or, specifically, police violence.

Wayson R. Jones is a multimedia painter of highly abstracted, very tactile and largely black-and-white portraits. Jones “is influenced by the sense of gesture, space and spontaneity in Abstract Expressionism.” The portraits are not literal, but combine “image, memory and emotion” through planned and chanced processes of painting. He captures the essence of people: the martyred status of murdered by police; the bars seared onto the image of non-violent prisoners incarcerated in the War on Drugs; the families, friends and communities crying out for justice; the weight of the expectations on this country’s first Black president.

 
Jeffrey Kent is a mixed media artist who works primarily in painting but also creates exquisite sculptural works. His “recent artworks reflect critically on the way mass media is used to convey social agenda.” He ranges in imagery from the Civil Rights Movement to contemporary media representations of African-American boys and men as ‘punks.’ His frequent use of backwards text forces the viewer to experience the “disenfranchisement, separation and humiliation” of those who have trouble with words on a daily basis.

Wendel Patrick is a photographer and musician who works with ambient sound. He collaborates with WYPR’s Aaron Henkin on the “Out of the Blocks” series, which—originally aired as one hour of radio—focuses on one Baltimore block at a time through recordings, interviews, photography and video. Patrick’s photography in this exhibition highlights Baltimore’s youth culture, last year’s racially-charged protests and definitions of masculinity.

Jamea Richmond-Edwards is well known for her images of women, elevated by halos in collage and drawing. In recent years, she has also begun working on extremely subtle, black-on-black drawings, occasionally highlighted with white conté crayon. Despite the subtlety of her technique, Richmond-Edwards creates powerful images, such as Guns, Bubbles and Black Power, which is a vision of powerful, Black, female autonomy.

Stephen Towns highlights the cliché of a ‘post-racial’ America by responding to issues within African-American culture. In this exhibition, his painting I Wish It Were That Easy celebrates African-Americans’ ability to vote but recognizes that “changes in leadership and policy can be slow.” During this election season, many people still find themselves disenfranchised or meeting resistance in exercising their right to vote. Seeing these experiences, Towns seeks to “create beauty from the hardships in life.”

To Be Black in White America- About the Artists

To Be Black in White America- About the Artists

 
Larry Cook is a finalist for the 11th annual Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize. He uses “photography, video, installation and text [to] examine identity, history and cultural symbolism.” His work challenges the notion of a ‘post-racial’ society. He takes a critical look at the “complex conditions of Black Americans.” The videos in this exhibition specifically examines Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of an integrated US, as expressed by his “I Have a Dream” speech and how far we have drifted from that vision.

Wesley Clark often focuses on the experience of young, Black males in America and the African Diaspora. His repeated use of targets in his art expresses the target that young, Black men feel is on them—asking them to behave a certain way, expecting them to fail and punishing them when they do. The works in his Open Season series are titled with the initials and age, date and state of death in, what Clark calls, “excessive response” incidents. Beginning with Trayvon Martin, Clark is tracking the Black men and women killed by police and other White “authorities.” While his subject matter is somber, the colorful tapestry created by Clark’s targets expresses the beauty of the people lost to such violence.

Linda Day Clark “is a community advocate working for change as an artist, educator and scholar.” Day Clark’s photograph North Avenue No. 24, from 1993, shows the then and continuing prevalence of and preference for the classic, White, blonde Barbie® doll. In Day Clark’s photograph, a young, Black girl smiles ear-to-ear as she shows off a doll in clothes and hairstyling that she has made herself. Earlier this year—over 20 years after Day Clark took her photograph on nearby North Avenue—Mattel® toys released Barbie® dolls with more varied appearances but whether they will take root with similarly diverse girls is yet to be determined.

Oletha DeVane is an accomplished multimedia artist who works in painting, printmaking, sculpture and video, often combining these elements in installations. Her influences include her faith, Greek mythology, Yoruba religion and biblical references. In this exhibition, she explores the ordeal of Henry “Box” Brown, the man who mailed himself to freedom in over a decade before the American Civil War.

 
Following the shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012, the slain teenager’s grey hoodie became an icon for racial profiling and wrongful death. Nehemiah Dixon III continues this conversation in his Suit of Armor series. He dipped hoodies in black epoxy resin and allowed them to cure so that they appear to contain a body. They are solid but ghostly. Their color assumes skin tone. They look like they should be protective, but we know that they are not. They look like they are being worn by a body, but that person is gone. Dixon’s hoodies are symbols of strife, loss, grief and mourning.

In 1997, Susan Goldman, a printmaker, began a series of work featuring the ‘Hottentot Venus.’ Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman from South Africa spent her adulthood displayed as a spectacle in 19th century human zoos. Even after her death, parts of her body were on display at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris until the 1970s. Her body was finally returned to South Africa and laid to rest in 2002. Although Baartman never came to the US, she is emblematic of the exploitation of the Black [especially female] body in both human zoos and modern media.

All of Curlee Holton’s prints featured in this exhibition were made in the early 1990s, but are so relevant to today’s racial climate that they could have been pulled, hot off the press yesterday. Man Man Meaning 1 and 2 speak to a shared belief in Christianity, but very different interpretations between White Supremacists and African Americans. Shoot’em Up provides images of Black-on-Black violence, but the red tip of the gun reminds us of the toy that 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by the Cleveland Police for carrying in a park. Promise reminds us of the numerous young men, with big dreams for the future, who have been taken by gun or, specifically, police violence.

Wayson R. Jones is a multimedia painter of highly abstracted, very tactile and largely black-and-white portraits. Jones “is influenced by the sense of gesture, space and spontaneity in Abstract Expressionism.” The portraits are not literal, but combine “image, memory and emotion” through planned and chanced processes of painting. He captures the essence of people: the martyred status of murdered by police; the bars seared onto the image of non-violent prisoners incarcerated in the War on Drugs; the families, friends and communities crying out for justice; the weight of the expectations on this country’s first Black president.

 
Jeffrey Kent is a mixed media artist who works primarily in painting but also creates exquisite sculptural works. His “recent artworks reflect critically on the way mass media is used to convey social agenda.” He ranges in imagery from the Civil Rights Movement to contemporary media representations of African-American boys and men as ‘punks.’ His frequent use of backwards text forces the viewer to experience the “disenfranchisement, separation and humiliation” of those who have trouble with words on a daily basis.

Wendel Patrick is a photographer and musician who works with ambient sound. He collaborates with WYPR’s Aaron Henkin on the “Out of the Blocks” series, which—originally aired as one hour of radio—focuses on one Baltimore block at a time through recordings, interviews, photography and video. Patrick’s photography in this exhibition highlights Baltimore’s youth culture, last year’s racially-charged protests and definitions of masculinity.

Jamea Richmond-Edwards is well known for her images of women, elevated by halos in collage and drawing. In recent years, she has also begun working on extremely subtle, black-on-black drawings, occasionally highlighted with white conté crayon. Despite the subtlety of her technique, Richmond-Edwards creates powerful images, such as Guns, Bubbles and Black Power, which is a vision of powerful, Black, female autonomy.

Stephen Towns highlights the cliché of a ‘post-racial’ America by responding to issues within African-American culture. In this exhibition, his painting I Wish It Were That Easy celebrates African-Americans’ ability to vote but recognizes that “changes in leadership and policy can be slow.” During this election season, many people still find themselves disenfranchised or meeting resistance in exercising their right to vote. Seeing these experiences, Towns seeks to “create beauty from the hardships in life.”

Art of the Collectors V

Image: Untitled, Lois Mailou Jones (1905‐1998), Oil on Canvas, 24” x 20” framed, Ruth and Sam Williams Collection
Untitled (detail), Lois Mailou Jones (1905‐1998), Oil on Canvas, 24” x 20” framed, Ruth and Sam Williams Collection

Art of the Collectors V

April 17 – June 11, 2016

about the exhibition | the artists | the art
 

Available Artwork

all prices subject to verification


About the Exhibition

Art of the Collectors V explores the role of the collector in preserving culture and building legacy through art collecting and giving. Featured are works created by prominent and lesser known artists, along with African art.  Offerings include rare paintings, original prints, photographs and sculptures held in private hands for generations, and important works of art from institution holdings.

Featuring Artwork by:

Romare Bearden, Camille Billops, Robert Blackburn, Elizabeth Catlett, Ernest Crichlow, James Denmark, Aaron Douglas, Elton Fax, Anna Gaskell, Grace Hartigan, Palmer Hayden, Alvin C. Hollingsworth, Lois Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Sam Middleton, Takashi Murakami, Stephanie Pogue, Betye Saar, Lenore Tawney, William T. Williams, Hale Woodruff, African Art, and more…

Michael Gross Abstraction – Curatorial Statement

Michael Gross, Colors 11 (detail), 2014, Acrylic on Canvas, dyptch, 6 x 8 ft

Michael Gross: Abstraction

June 13 – July 26, 2015
American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center
 

Michael Gross: The Man and His Passion

When the intention to create art is coupled with passion, intuition and improvisation, the result is an almost indescribable beauty; and such is the work of Michael Gross. As a Bethesda, Maryland-based painter and printmaker for more than three decades, Gross has strived to, and succeeded in, establishing his own art idiom. His works are influenced by the masters of Abstract Expressionism: Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn and Jackson Pollock. However, Gross does not seek to mimic, but rather pay homage to those whose styles he admires.

In his solo exhibition, Michael Gross: Abstraction, the artist takes us on a visual journey with dramatic, emotion-filled canvases from his Colors series (2013-2015); and then diverts us down an insouciant path where we discover whimsical and richly layered monoprints.

Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Gross (b. 1944), showed artistic promise from a young age. His talents would not only be influenced and nurtured by his artist mother, with whom he would travel to the Art Institute of Chicago where they took classes; and his father, an advertising executive who took Gross to his office on weekends, where he would set him up at a drafting table with crayons and paper, allowing him to draw for hours; but also recognized and rewarded monetarily, as the fledgling artist, at the age of ten, won an art competition and received a $500 savings bond.

Gross would go on to earn a Juris Doctor degree from New York University School of Law, becoming a corporate attorney, and in the 80s, a real estate developer. But art-making always remained an integral part of his life, as he continued to take classes at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, D.C. and develop his techniques under the watchful eye of friend and mentor, artist William Christenberry.

Writer, Shelley Singer, Gross’s wife, admits that she fell in love with him because he has the “mind of a businessman and the soul of an artist”. It is this dual existence, and complex nature of the man that reveals itself in the artwork. Gross creates art as “a means of grappling with the impulses and struggles that make up the way I see my place in the world.”

Michael Gross invites us into his world and it is easy to succumb to the magnetism of his acrylic paintings. His rhythmic brushstrokes, punctuated with mark-making and intentionally laid drippings of paint are hypnotic. Through spatial separation and planes of color, Gross achieves a dynamism and lyricism in the work that is enticing.

Each painting beckons for a macro and micro examination. In viewing the work from a distance, it is easy to become engulfed by the magnitude of the paintings and kaleidoscope of colors. A micro perspective, offers an intimate experience which reveals Gross’s intentionality in creating structure and balance.
In exploring Gross’s monoprints, a more playful, but no less serious side of the artist is revealed. The execution of each piece was carried out with the same tenacious effort as that of the paintings. For Gross is resolute in creating beauty.

Gross’s layering of cut-up photographs and repurposed older prints, fashioned in various shapes are enhanced by stenciling and the artist’s hand; the result is richly surfaced prints, each with its own unique stylized impression. Under the guidance of master printmaker Susan Goldman, the ink and materials were carefully laid with the intent to achieve equilibrium in both composition and form.

As painter and printmaker, Gross’s work is devoid of social or political commentary, and ideological reference; it offers instead an intellectual dialogue on the beauty of abstraction. His vernacular is steeped in a spectrum of color and intensely focused compositions. Gross’s profound works are imbued with his passion to create art.

Myrtis Bedolla, Founding Director and Curator
Galerie Myrtis

Our Common Bond – Curatorial Statement

Gee’s Bend Image No. 35 & No. 4 by Linda Day Clark

Our Common Bond: Mother, Daughter, Sister, Self

October 1 – November 15, 2009

artwork | artists’ talk | exhibition catalogue

Curatorial Statement by Myrtis Bedolla, Curator and Founding Director, Galerie Myrtis

Our Common Bond: Mother, Daughter, Sister, Self is a survey of the life experiences of fifteen African-American woman artists, bound by their roles as mothers, daughters and sisters, and the quest to maintain their self-identity. Their narratives, conveyed through their poignant works of art, are a social and political commentary on black womanhood, and compelling testament to courage, love, strength and self-sacrifice. And while every aspect of the traditional roles of women is not addressed in this exhibition; as the works are autobiographical, each expression provides a commentary on black womanhood through imagery constructed around the maternal bond.

The role of mother, daughter, and sister is the sustenance of the black community. These artists, whose artistic genius give voice to these roles, share in a journey that spans nine decades; from the matriarch, Elizabeth Catlett, the conveyer of our social and political landscape, to her artistic progeny, the generations of women artists who follow in her path. They are master storytellers, astute herstorians whose works becomes the iconography that symbolizes our rich cultural and historic heritage.

In capturing the essence of womanhood, the artists embrace an aesthetic informed by a solidarity based on shared conditions and concerns. They remind us that black women are bound, beyond the blood which flows through their veins. It is also through a sisterhood and intuitiveness which stems from the feminine divine.

And yet, there remains the quest to preserve the “self,” while existing within the role of caregiver, mentor, friend, and lover. In an intense commentary on self-identity, the artists define their own vision and sense of purpose. Narratives, deeply rooted in personal experiences are portrayed through allegorical imagery, which provides a compelling view on self and purpose.

To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power.
—Maya Angelou

In Free Your Mind, printmaker Maya Freelon Asante employs the ink from tissue paper gifted by her grandmother and a photograph of Harriett Tubman to create a powerful mono/print in which Tubman becomes the archetype for motherhood. A runaway slave and abolitionist, Tubman became known as “Moses” for sacrificing her life to lead hundreds of slaves to freedom. Mother Harriett continues to be the embodiment of motherhood and symbol of the courage, unselfish love, and sacrifices made by black women.

Master printmaker and sculptor Elizabeth Catlett reminds us that the maternal bond extends beyond the immediate family. Mimi is devoted to one Catlett has embraced outside of her family circle. The work is symbolic of relationships formed among women, where love and wisdom are shared.

Photographer Linda Day Clark captures the artistry of quilt-making in her series of photographs of the women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama. Featured are Mary Lee Bendolph and Addie Pearl Nicholson who are bound by their shared history, strong sense of community, and commitment to preserving the quilt-making tradition.

Printmaker Margo Humphrey employs her mastery of lithography in creating Dorothy’s Flowers. A beautiful bouquet of colorful flowers pays tribute to Humphrey’s mother, Dorothy Reed Humphrey “for her undying love and support and the nurturing of my talent as a young artist.” And for the “beauty she brought to our home and environment.” This loving sentiment is a testament to the significance of the mother and daughter relationship.

Annie Phillips’ remembrance of growing up in Washington, D.C., during the period of prohibition is captured in Yes-Mam Girl. Paying tribute to her mother who served with dignity as a waitress at the Cairo Hotel and other private clubs in the city, Phillips’ collage composed of colored paper fragments takes on the shape of her mother, dressed in a lacy white cap and apron, who stands in a handsomely furnished room filled with finely dressed white women who await her service. In making her mother the dominant figure, Annie conveys the message that even in the midst of subservience and segregation, the black woman’s dignity and pride cannot be lost.

The African-American community is deeply rooted in spirituality and religious conviction. And prayer is the core of this existence. In Supplication, an emotionally compelling work by painter Delilah Pierce which portrays a woman with eyes looking toward the heavens with hands pleading for divine guidance. The figure is symbolic of every black woman who turns to pray for strength and guidance.

In Evita Tezeno’s The Bus Stop Shuffle, the juxtaposition of paper of varied shapes and textures form the figures of black women posed for the bus as they begin or end their work day. Drawing from childhood memories and historic events, Tezeno’s work is telling of the role of black women working outside of the home, and symbolic of the historic bus ride taken by Rosa Parks, the pivotal civil rights figure whose historic bus ride in Montgomery, Alabama, prompted a bus boycott.

Galileo said, “Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.” For Joyce Wellman it is the vernacular through which her work speaks. Wellman, an abstractionist, combines geometry, ubiquitous elements, and cryptic messages to create works that are spiritual and otherworldly. In Ode to Off Spring I & II, a diptych by Wellman is “influenced by the intersecting circle of the Visica Piscis. These works have the added imagery of numbers and reference remembrances to my mother. Thematically, these abstract canvases are inspired by the confluence of the sacred in art and the embrace of a mathematics aesthetic.”

A daughter is a mother’s gender partner, her closest ally in the family confederacy, an extension of herself. And mothers are their daughters’ role model, their biological and emotional road map, the arbiter of all their relationships.
—Victoria Secunda

In a personal narrative, Oletha DeVane explores the emotional depth of the mother and daughter relationship in Parallel, a video and installation that explores the analogous existence between mother and daughter who “grow apart to come back together again.” The video is a testament to their bond and the strength of their love.

Sculptor Martha Jackson-Jarvis’ Umbilicus is an amalgamation of spherical shapes and abstract forms which take on an ethereal appearance, as spirally shaped wood symbolic of the umbilical cord, the tube through which life-sustaining blood flows; joins densely covered objects, whose symbology represents the bond between mother and daughter and the physicality of their relationship.

Is solace anywhere more comforting than in the arms of a sister.
—Alice Walker

Photographer and printmaker, Evangeline J. Montgomery’s explores identity and cultural memory in the photomontage, Heritage #4, which features the faces of African-American, Ghanaian, Kenyan, and Nigerian women. Through the complexity and formal arrangement of the layered faces, Montgomery links four generations of woman who are bound by their African kinship.

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle’s intuitive re-purposing of ethnographic photographs of West African women encompasses the solidarity and intimate knowing shared among women. In A Promise to You a Promise for Me, sisters “support each other and act as towers of strength.” They are bound by strands of hair, drawn by Hinkle, which act, as she suggests, as a metaphor for power and signifier for culture, sex and gender.

Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
— Toni Morrison (Beloved)

According to Alexis De Veaux, Valerie Maynard makes the viewer aware of what a black woman sees when the world is shaped by her hands. Free Woman, a linoleum cut by Maynard invokes the independent spirit of black women sending a message to maintain the “self,” a part of their existence that is independent of the role of mother, daughter, and sister and be free within ourselves, with outstretched arms, ready to embrace the universe of possibilities.

In her series, Ancestry Progeny, Joyce J. Scott speaks through an aesthetic of fused/painted glass, imagery, and objects in addressing her African-American, Native and Scottish heritage. Ancestry Progeny II is a personal narrative on race and identity. Scott, portrayed as a reclining nude surrounds herself with objects symbolic of her cultural legacy.

Mixed media artist, Renee Stout employs conjuration, root work, folklore, and music in creating See-Line Woman, a silkscreen titled after the song made popular by Nina Simone. Stout appears as her alter-ego, the root worker/seer Fatima who personifies the power and seduction of the See-Line Woman. Possessed with the ability to control men with her wiggle, purr and cat-like movements, the seer stands posed, as she conjurers up her next victim.

Myrtis Bedolla, Curator and Founding Director
Galerie Myrtis

What is your Tar Baby – Curatorial Statement

What is Your Tar Baby? #1 (detail) by Charly Palmer
What is Your Tar Baby? #1 (detail) by Charly Palmer

What is Your Tar Baby?

November 7, 2010 – February 13, 2011
artwork | watch artist talk | about Charly Palmer | exhibition catalogue
 

Curatorial Statement

Joel Chandler Harris, author of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby stories, is credited with preserving African folklore and maintaining the indigenous quality of the slave vernacular through his Uncle Remus character. In 1878, interviewer [James Morrow] asked Harris if any particular Negro suggested “the quaint and philosophic character which he had built up into one of the monuments of modern literature” Harris replied:

He was not an invention of my own, but a human syndicate …of those whom I have known. I just walloped them together into one person and called him ‘Uncle Remus.’ You must remember that sometimes the Negro is a genuine and an original philosopher.

In “What is your Tar Baby?” artist Charly Palmer is the genuine and original philosopher. As the griot, he appropriates the tale of “Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby” to address issues of bigotry, racism and stereotyping. In Harris’ tale, the rabbit becomes trapped when the tar figure violates social expectations by refusing to exchange greetings. In Palmer’s version, it is no longer the archetypal trickster rabbit, but rather civil rights leaders, entertainers, politicians, scholars, and African and Native Americans who confront the tar baby. Each metaphoric “tar baby”, represents a conviction to a social cause, sensitive situation or misguided belief. The setting, − no longer the briar patch or a benevolent plantation − is a greatly conflicted society.

There is an ease and confidence with which Charly has rendered social commentary in the guise of folklore. He is as edgy and cunning as Brer Fox in the way he addresses controversial subject matter. While pointing to well-known figures whose foibles have brought on public fame or infamy, he provokes a deep emotional response. Palmer taps into the collective psyche, reaching the inner sanctum where our tar baby lies.

Myrtis Bedolla, Curator and Founding Director
Galerie Myrtis

Source Citation
Harris, Julia Collier. “‘Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings’.” The Life and Letters of Joel Chandler Harris. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918. 142-160. Rpt. in Children’s Literature Review. Ed. Deborah J. Morad. Vol. 49. Detroit: Gale Research, 1999. Literature Resource Center. Web. 4 Oct. 2010.

Galerie Myrtis
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