Join Myrtis Bedolla and Michael Evanson as they explore the life of Dr. Adolphus Ealey (1941-1992) who served as the curator and director of The Barnett Aden Gallery, which was founded in 1943, by Professor James Herring of Howard University and his student, Alonzo Aden, the first curator. The Barnett Aden Gallery was located in Washington, D.C. and was the nation’s first successful black-owned gallery.
Gallery Talk
Bedolla will also address why the Barnett Aden Gallery was established; how the collection was built, why Ealey sold the collection for $6 million in 1989; and how Robert L. Johnson came to acquire it ten years later.
Michael was fortunate to ride around as co-pilot on many of Adolphus’ artistic journeys in Washington, DC as Adolphus was museum curator, art appraiser, art collector, and creative consultant to many clients, artists, and business associates in the Washington area. Michael appreciates that Adolphus was an extraordinary artist himself and always worked to ensure a lasting legacy for the Barnett-Aden Collection.
Artist Talk
Tea with Myrtis: Artist Stephen Towns and film critic Tim Gordon engage in a lively discussion about the exhibition and the timely cinematic prospective from the 2016 film The Birth of a Nation. Myrtis Bedolla will served as moderator.
Gordon has turned his passion for film into his life’s work, seeking to educate future generations and alter the perspective of African-American portrayals on the screen and in the executive suites of Hollywood.
He began his career as a film historian studying early African-Americans in early Hollywood and its impact on current trends. In 1992, Gordon created Third Renaissance to bridge the gap between Hollywood and the African-African community. He published the company’s newsletter, The Renaissance Review, which was distributed nationally.
In 2000, Gordon created The Black Reel Reel Awards, honoring African-Americans in feature, independent and television films, as well as the online site, Reel Images Magazine, which covered the entertainment industry.
Gordon created the movie brand, “FilmGordon” in 2008, consolidating his film content and social media platforms under one umbrella.
His work has appeared in the USA Today, Variety Magazine’s prestigious Bureau of Film Critics, and has been a guest on NewsOne with Roland Martin, BET Tonight with Tavis Smiley and BET’s Screen Scene and Howard University’s Evening Exchange (WHUT-TV).
As a writer, Bedolla has contributed to The International Review of African American Art and Valentine Magazine; online newsletters: ARTINFO and IRAAA (International Review of African American Art). And she has written numerous exhibition essays.
In 2015, Bedolla curated two seminal museum exhibitions, “Shadow Matter: The Rhythm of Structure / Afro Futurism to Afro Surrealism” featuring the work of sculptor M. Scott Johnson held at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African America Art in Detroit, Michigan, and “Michael Gross: Abstraction” featuring painter and printmaker Michael Gross presented at American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in Washington, D.C.
Appointed board memberships include: the Association of African American Museums, Washington, D.C.; Art Advisory Board, University of Maryland University College, College Park Maryland; Robert Deutsch Foundation, Baltimore, Maryland; Board of Directors for the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, Washington, D.C.; and Executive Board for the Station North Arts and Entertainment District, Baltimore, Maryland.
Bedolla is a member of ArtTable: a national organization for professional women in the visual arts. And sits on the Practicum Advisory Committee for the Masters in Curatorial Studies for Maryland Institute College of Art; Audience Committee for the Walters Art Museum; Leadership Council Committee for the Open Society Institute of Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland; Scholarship Committee for the Congressional Black Caucus, Washington, D.C. and is a past Grant Panelist for the District of Columbia Commission for the Arts and Humanities.
Photograph courtesy Stephen Spartana
photography.spartana.com
Tea with Myrtis: Saturday, February 18, 2017, 3:00 – 5:00 pm
Join artist Stephen Towns and film critic Tim Gordon for a lively discussion about the exhibition and the timely cinematic prospective from the 2016 film The Birth of a Nation. Myrtis Bedolla will serve a moderator.
Tea served with savory treats starting at 3:00pm
Discussion begins at 3:45pm $20 per person
Artwork: I Will Fear No Evil, 2016, Acrylic, paper, fabric, metal leaf, panel, 12”x 12”
On Saturday February 11, 2017, Myrtis Bedolla, Founding Director of Galerie Myrtis, will participate in a panel discussion taking place at the Baltimore Museum of Art from 2-3pm. The panel discussion is part of a suite of events, collectively titled “Creativity Exchange: Intersections Between Black Artists and Black-Owned Businesses.”
Exhibitions
Shall It Declare Thy Truth? (detail), 2016
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
‘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.
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.
to Come
Reference: French, Scott. The Rebellious Slave: Nat Turner in American Memory. New York, NY. Houghton Mifflin Company. 2004
Exhibitions
Michael Gross, Colors 11 (detail), 2014, Acrylic on Canvas, dyptch, 6 x 8 ft
June 13 – July 26, 2015
American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center
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.
Exhibitions
Gee’s Bend Image No. 35 & No. 4 by Linda Day Clark
October 1 – November 15, 2009
artwork | artists’ talk | exhibition catalogue
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
Exhibitions
What is Your Tar Baby? #1 (detail) by Charly Palmer
November 7, 2010 – February 13, 2011
artwork | watch artist talk | about Charly Palmer | exhibition catalogue
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.
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.
Exhibitions
by Myrtis Bedolla, Founding Director, Galerie Myrtis
Exhibition Location: Charles H. Wright Museum, Detroit, Michigan
Shadow Matter: The Rhythm of Structure/ Afro-Futurism to Afro-Surrealism features sculptures by New York sculptor M. Scott Johnson (Inkster, Michigan, 1968). In parallel with the aesthetic practices of both Afro-Futurism and Afro-Surrealism, Johnson transforms the ancient medium of stone into intricately carved sculptures that fuse African and African-American visual cultures. The work in this exhibition explores his journey in becoming one of the most unique sculptors of his generation.
This mid-career retrospective, traces the trajectory of Johnson’s multifaceted career. His works are rooted in Afro-Diasporan imagination and are inspired by folklore, mythology, revisionist history and his education as a student of Detroit’s techno/house
music universe. As an “artivist,” Scott unabashedly and unapologetically addresses self-perceived notions of classism and race, while harnessing his visual syntax to give voice to the disenfranchised. He has extended performance of sculpture into the social sphere by initiating and developing community-based collaborative public art throughout New York City.
Scott’s education as a sculptor began in 1994, in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe as a member of Operation Crossroads Africa. While there he studied traditional and contemporary stone sculpting under the tutelage of the local artists who occupied the endless alleyways of the city. At the time Zimbabwe was producing some of the most important stone sculptors in the contemporary art world. His greatest opportunity as a young artist came when he auditioned and was invited to apprentice (1996-1999) with master sculptor and national hero Nicholas Mukomberanwa (1940-2002) in Ruwa, Zimbabwe.
As an Afro-Futurist/Surrealist, Scott embraces the aesthetic mixture of fantasy, Afrocentricity, and magic realism with non-Western cosmologies to create new cultural landscapes and reshape old ones. Johnson believes his early embrace of Techno music was a point of departure into the scientific and spiritual practices of the African Diaspora. He also states that growing up in the close-knit community of Inkster provided him with an extremely supportive base of natural allies, willing to help expand his intellectual and artistic horizons.
Exhibition Location:
Charles H. Wright Museum
315 East Warren Avenue
Detroit, MI 48201
thewright.org