Lavett Ballard
Black Venus, 2019
Collage on hand carved birch wood panel
24h"x12w"
Price: $1,500
Lavett Ballard
Kindred, 2020
Collage with digital paper, acrylic and oil paint on reclaimed wood fencing
6'h x 4'w
Price: $7,500
Lavett Ballard
She is Immortal, 2020
Collage with digital paper, acrylic paint on reclaimed wood fencing
28"h x 18"w
Price: $2,000
Lavett Ballard
A Song Flung up to Heaven, 2020
Collage with digital paper, acrylic and oil paint on reclaimed wood fencing
71"h x 37"w
Price: $5,000
Lavett Ballard
Healing Rituals, 2020
Collage with digital paper, acrylic paint on reclaimed wood fencing
36"h x 27"w
Price: $3,000
As a child, I would spend summers at our family farm in Virginia. This ritual of traveling from the North to the South all the while being fed the stories of how we grew to gain the property and how the “Big House” I would be staying in was built by my three times great grandmother’s sons. The house was a step back in time prior, to the flight of the Great Migration which sent masses toward opportunities in the North. Through this experience, I was drawn to the history of the log cabin that held generations of my family in a home surrounded by photographs that chronicled our history.
This experience helped to foster an interest in visual storytelling while fusing the wood that surrounded me during the summers of my youth. My strong affinity for imagery and history has led me to focus on creating a visual lexicon of the African American experience and self-identity.
I’ve spent hours compiling a photographic catalog of female and male images that cover the African diaspora over different geographic areas and historic periods. The prints are collaged, painted, destroyed and reborn to create a re-imagined visual narrative. I use reclaimed large and small aged wood fences, as a symbolic reference to how fences keep people in and out, just as racial and gender identities can act as barriers in our socially. These fences are then arranged as ‘altars’ as icons to honor the strength and determination of each subject.
Biography
Lavett Ballard is an Artist, Art historian, Curator, and Author. She hold a dual Bachelor’s in Studio Art and Art History with a minor in Museum Studies from Rutgers University, and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
Ballard’s art has been included in literary, film and theatre productions and museum, galleries, public, private institutions and exhibitions nationwide. Among other accolades I have been named by Black Art in America as one of the Top 10 Female Emerging Artists to Collect and has been nominated for the inaugural Art for Social change Pew Foundation funded Residency among other distinguished honors. Her work has been acquired by prominent collections such as the Smithsonian, the African American Museum of Philadelphia, the T. Thomas Fortune Cultural Center, Weeksville Heritage Center, the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection and the Grant and Tamia Hill private Collections.
Ballard views her art as a re-imagined visual narrative of people of African descent. Her use of imagery reflects social issues affecting primarily Black women’s stories within a historical context. Her current body of work uses collaged photos adorned with paint, oil pastels, and metallic foils. These photos are deconstructed and layered on reclaimed large and small aged wood fences. The use of fences is a symbolic reference to how fences keep people in and out, just as racial and gender identities can do the same socially. The fusion of wood and photography offers artwork that both explores her southern roots, visually speaks volumes to continuing themes within her community.
Galerie Myrtis postpones opening for Women Heal through Rite and Ritual
As the COVID-19 (coronavirus) continues to permeate every aspect of our lives, we recognize the need to take preventative measures in order to ensure the safety of our staff, our artists, and our patrons.
So, it’s with a heavy heart that we are postponing the opening of the Women Heal through Rite and Ritual exhibition featuring the work of Lavett Ballard, Tawny Chatmon, Oletha DeVane, Shanequa Gay, Delita Martin, Elsa Munoz, and Renée Stout. Additionally, the Artist Talk will also be rescheduled. We are planning to hold these events in the future. However, because of the fluidity of the situation, no date will be announced at this time.
To honor the work of these extraordinary women, we will present a virtual tour of the show. And images and information on the artwork will be posted on the gallery website. Please follow us on social media to stay abreast of our rescheduling efforts.
Until further notice, the gallery will be opened by appointment only.
If you have any questions, please email, info@galeriemyrtis.com | Phone: 410/235-3711
artwork: Six Persimmons by Delita Martin
Acrylic, charcoal, decorative papers, hand-stitching,
relief printing, oil and acrylic on wood
51.5W x 71.5H inches
2019
Women Heal through Rite and Ritual draws from the imaginative narratives of artists Lavett Ballard, Tawny Chatmon, Oletha DeVane, Shanequa Gay, Delita Martin, Elsa Muñoz and Renée Stout who look to non-Western traditions for inspiration in exploring a woman’s role as nurturer of family and community; and as traditional healer, conjure woman, and clairvoyant who dwells in both the physical and spiritual realms.
Delita Martin, "Black Moon"
Elsa Muñoz, "Controlled Burn 14"
Oletha DeVane, "Sanctuary"
Renée Stout, "The Time She Saw Too Much"
Shanequa Gay, "summoning"
Tawny Chatmon, "Two: The Awakening Series"
Lavett Ballard, "Healing-Rituals"
Conveyed through visceral imagery—manifested in paintings, prints, photography, and sanctuaries are the artists’ cultural, social, spiritual, and political commentaries on the rites of womanhood, and an intimate and compelling testament to the essence of the divine feminine and self.
As giver of life, custodian of traditional African religion and customs, preserver of culture, counselor, and psychologist, and at times, the conduit between two worlds, Women Heal through Rite and Ritual celebrates and reclaims a woman’s power and place in the natural and supernatural worlds.
As the COVID-19 (coronavirus) continues to permeate every aspect of our lives, we recognize the need to take preventative measures in order to ensure the safety of our staff, our artists, and our patrons. While the gallery remains closed, we offer an online version of our current exhibition Women Heal through Rite and Ritual. We are planning to hold the opening reception and artist talk in the future. However, because of the fluidity of the situation, no date will be announced at this time. Until then enjoy the online 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.
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 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.”
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.”
In challenging the notion of the feminine archetype, artists embrace and reach beyond the boundaries of the female form to express the essence of a woman, figuratively, conceptually and metaphorically. Participating artists: Sondra Arkin, David Carlson, Oletha Devane, Phylicia Ghee, Michael Gross, Nora Howell, Edwin Remsburg, Rachel Rotenberg, and Mary Walker. Myrtis Bedolla, curator, Jessica Stafford-Davis, co-curator
Artists’ Talk: African-American women artists who are bound by their personal experiences as mothers, daughters and sisters; and the effort to maintain their self-identity.
Featured Artist: Maya Freelon Asante, Elizabeth Catlett, Linda Day Clark, Oletha DeVane, Kenyatta Hinkle, Margo Humphrey, Martha Jackson-Jarvis, Valerie Maynard, E.J. Montgomery, Annie Phillips, Delilah Pierce, Joyce Scott, Renee Stout, Evita Tezeno and Joyce Wellman.
In challenging the notion of the feminine archetype, artists embrace and reach beyond the boundaries of the female form to express the essence of a woman, figuratively, conceptually and metaphorically.
As Color, alluring imagery stretches the imagination and explores a woman’s sexual and intellectual power through aggressive gestures and symbolic references to the feminine life-giving force. As Light, provocative photographs portray a woman’s physical strength and ubiquitous presence in nature. As Form, moving two and three dimensional objects, emblematic of the ethereal qualities of a woman, reveal the complexities, convictions and intuitiveness of the feminine expressed as the divine; a ritualistic-based video serves as testimony to one woman’s personal journey of renewal, and others speak to healing, identity, memory and transformation in tableaus that embody a woman’s unbridled spirit.
Artwork
Sondra Arkin
Permutations Toward Infinity Series
Wax/Shellac: dibond
No: 47
Year: 2012
16” x 16”
Sondra Arkin
Permutations Toward Infinity Series
Wax/Shellac: dibond
No: 68
Year: 2012
16” x 16”
Sondra Arkin
Permutations Toward Infinity Series
Wax/Shellac: dibond
No: 76
Year: 2012
16” x 16”
Sondra Arkin
Permutations Toward Infinity Series
Wax/Shellac: dibond
No: 73
Year: 2012
16” x 16”
Sigrid Vollerthun
Hibiscus Candle
Photograph
Year: 2010
Framed: 26 ½ x 20”
Mary Walker
Eternal Life
Acrylic and canvas on wood panel
Year: 2010
12” x 12” x 4 ½”
Participating artists: Sondra Arkin, Maya Freelon Asante, David Carlson, Oletha Devane, Phylicia Ghee, Michael Gross, Nora Howell, Ada Pinkston, Edwin Remsburg, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, Rachel Rotenberg, Amy Sherald, Sigrid Vollerthun and Mary Walker. Along with Sondheim Semi-finalists: A. Moon and Adejoke Tugbiyele
Artscape Gallery Network Exhibit curated by Myrtis Bedolla and co-curator Jessica Stafford-Davis
The Artscape Gallery Network connects two dozen Baltimore galleries to a wider audience through a promotional campaign sponsored by M&T Bank and provides art lovers with an extended opportunity to enjoy Baltimore’s talented artists before, during and after the festival weekend. The Artscape Gallery Network exhibitions highlight 2013 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize applicants, along with artists working throughout the region.
Our Common Bond: Mother, Daughter, Sister, Self is a compelling testament to the complex societal roles of Black women, derived from imagery of African-American women artists who are bound by their personal experiences as mothers, daughters and sisters; and the effort to maintain their self-identity.
Artists: Maya Freelon Asante, Elizabeth Catlett, Linda Day Clark, Oletha DeVane, Kenyatta Hinkle, Margo Humphrey, Martha Jackson-Jarvis, Valerie Maynard, E.J. Montgomery, Annie Phillips, Delilah Pierce, Joyce Scott, Renee Stout, Evita Tezeno and Joyce Wellman.
Foreward by Leslie King-Hammond, PhD
Paperback: 44 pages | 32 color illustrations
Year published: 2008
Language: English
ISBN: 978-091960258
Dimensions: 8.5 x 11 inches
Exhibitions
Diapotheque Series, 2010 by Edwin Remsburg
