I was recently included on an ESSENCE.COM listing featuring 10 Female African American Artists To Know (see #9). I am flattered and genuinely amazed at my inclusion, but I think we might do well to expand that list . Creativity gives us the opportunity to create infinite pies so we can all get a slice. So, I've decided to compile my own "To Know" list, and since K" is the eleventh letter of the alphabet, my selections number accordingly. These women of the African continent and Diaspora are but a few shining examples of our limitless intelligence and creativity.
I am from Gainesville, Florida- a small college town in North Central Florida within the county of Alachua. These are mundane factual tidbits that reveal a layered history that I’ve only recently discovered. While I had cursory knowledge of the refuge that Florida provided to black slaves, I had no idea that one of the state’s most venerated Native figures (Osceola) was a multi-racial person of Native, European and African ancestry who married a Black woman. Nor was I aware of the strategic and cultural role blacks played in the development of Seminole tribal politics. “After 1858, the Black Seminoles had their greatest impact on U.S. history when their story reached a national audience with the publication of Joshua Reed Giddings' The Exiles of Florida. Their history furnished President Lincoln a legal precedent for the wider emancipation of black militants in 1863.” Black Seminoles, John Horse (Gopher John) and Abraham, were complete unknowns to me until January 2010. I am angered by my ignorance, but I am even more incensed by the fact that my mandatory Florida History classes were so blatantly disrespectful of a rich cultural history that I may claim as my own. So, in rebellion, I wish to create a visual weapon to incite a conceptual uprising, a rally against this invisibility.
LINKS:
Black Seminoles, Maroons and Freedom Seekers in Florida
"Oftentimes, the story of slavery is one of oppression, in which enslaved Africans have been victimized. This exhibit will celebrate a narrative of liberation and self-determination, through the recognition of the spirit of freedom fighters and leaders of resistance during the African Holocaust. Using the maroon communities and rebellions as a point of reference, artists are asked to submit work that reflects the resistance movements that raged against the institution of slavery throughout the Caribbean inspired by the revolution of Saint Domingue that spread thoughout Jamaica, Cuba and Brazil and that served as source of inspiration for rebellions that occurred in the U.S. Neg Mawon, a kreyol term meaning“Black Maroons,” pays tribute to the known and unknown African Diasporan warriors who fought for liberty, equality, and human rights."
Curated by: Shantrelle P. Lewis
Deadline for submissions: Thursday, January 28, 2010 | Exhibition dates: Late March 25, 2010
The opening for ves·sel approaches, so I've composed a few graphic elements to be used by the featured artists, bloggers, gallery staff, etc. to get the word out. To use simply click the thumbnails below for a full-sized image. They can be saved to your computer or embedded directly into an email.
For my whitebitches | theplatinumeaters series I have been looking for close-up beauty shots to continue my appropriation techniques, but hadn't found anything that connected with the vision I had in my head. After an inspirational adventure with Deana (more about that later), I stopped by the Borders bookstore near my studio. The bargin selections are always a treat, since you tend to find large format photography books. Lo and behold, I serendipitously stumble onto An Eye For Beauty.
"From 1973 to 1998, John Derek photographed only one subject: his wife and muse, Bo. Other renowned cameramen have photographed Bo Derek, but none have captured her beauty as did the man who studied her from adolescence to maturity. Here, celebrated author-photographer and Derek family friend Robert Vavra combines words and images to create a singular book. Through conversations with Linda Evans, Ursula Andress, Elmer Bernstein, Gerry Spence, Shania Twain, and other friends of the Dereks, he reveals the fascinating story of one man’s obsession with beauty and his photographic odyssey to capture it."
At $5.99, it was an irresistible purchase, not to mention spot-on, in terms of the source material I wanted to work with. After Derek's cornrowed debut in the movie 10, this particular appropriation garnered attention from the black community critiquing her use of the hairstyle. To be honest , I always thought it looked striking on her and thought she pulled it off beautifully, but I can absolutely relate to being overtly critical of her choice. In Bo Derek, I have found that quintessential aesthetic that whitebitches attempts to reinterpret, but I've also found a back story that speaks to notions of control, youth, whiteness, marriage...
Plus as a natural California blond, her appeal is closely tied to a mythology that I wish to explore.
A few months ago I went to a seminar hosted by LMCC that featured Jackie Battenfield. Among the topics and words of advice she emphasized, was the importance of documenting your work. Fellow LMCC WorkSpacer and photographer, Deana Lawson, graciously obliged my request to shoot some of my most recent work. Beyond the fact that I think the images are a beautiful collaboration between Deana's expert eye and the objects I created, seeing them as photographs gives me the opportunity to become a member of the audience. These images now allow for a comfortable distance where I can admire and be inspired by what is too close and personal to recognize in the moment of making.
"Kenya (Robinson) is a multi-media artist based in Brooklyn. She takes the ritual as a site for her artistic production, addressing politics of the quotidian and the ceremonies of the mundane. Her exhibition, “HAIRPOLITIC: The Pursuit of Nappiness” was on view at the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Art in 2008, investigating construction of identities within the notions of choice and acceptance. For “Rope-a-dope,” Kenya uses the pre-fight ritual of hand wrapping as the visual backdrop for a rapped soliloquy that fuses the poetry of Gabriella Calvocoressi, the rhymed boasts of Muhammad Ali, and polyrhythmic patterns of 70’s soul."
The impetus for BLACK TRASH: Sacred Melodramas is an experiment in time travel and an exploration of American pulp fiction. In the future, when our culture as we know it has been transformed into something ancient and unfamiliar, scholars will attempt to piece together our modern existence. I believe that because items of vernacular culture are populous in nature, these will be the texts/ images/objects that survive the requisite millennia to be studied. I think this time passage will create a different understanding of these artifacts, making them sacred objects of a dead culture. Through my performances I am attempting to fast forward this process, morphing ghettoized fiction into fragmented chants and incantations.
"Guuuuurl, that bitch D. fucked S. up! Nigga had his nose wide open for her ass, but she always tryna get in his business. Asking questions- don't she know the less you know, the less you have to snitch to the cops with? Well, anyway S. got turned out, so he be telling her everything! Dumb ass...
D. done told these muthfuckas how S. moves, who his connect is, and the when and where of his last drop off! The Jakes got 'em, now he got a life bid. All over some pussy."
Source Material: Old Testament/ Judges 16 (King James Version)
Ultimately , what are myths and parables, but hyper-meta-real melodramas?
I was recently introduced to FlipMu via the thoughtfully random EYEBEAM reBlog postings of Jon Cohrs.
"FlipMu is home to the collective works of Owen Vallis and Jordan Hochenbaum. Interested in exploring the artistic and aesthetic implications of fusing interactive design, sound, and technology, FlipMu has created works ranging from large scale interactive multi-touch commercial installations to live musical performance using custom hardware and software."
"The Shining Mantis, a Brooklyn-based artist pair, consists of former Workspace residents Ernest Concepción and Mike Estabrook. Last Thursday, we invited them to our office to create a work that became Pandarok: The Birth of Kangis Khan, a 10 foot by 7 foot chalk drawing on a wall adjacent to our conference room. They arrived at 11AM and worked until about 7:30PM, during which we snapped a picture every 30 seconds. Here's the creation of Pandarok: The Birth of Kangis Khan in 34 seconds."
You might catch a glimpse of me in the video, but don't strain, the building of the image is the video's most engaging aspect...
I am really looking forward to fine-tuning this performance, but in the meantime please enjoy the documentation of my first attempt of BLACK TRASH: A Sacred Melodrama.
"Inspired by the relationship between rhythmic speech patterns, text, and consumer technologies, I am creating a sonic language that utilizes sampling production techniques, polyrhythmic structures, and pulp literature to express melodramatic narratives. The text for this body of work comes from Urban Fiction novels. Hawked on the streets of every American metropolitan city, these pulp narratives range from self-published tales of “ghetto life” to slickly packaged morsels from major publishers. Black Urban Fiction has a distinctive language that I hope to break out of its context by layering excerpts filtered through the text-to-voice function of Adobe Acrobat and Mac Automator. By presenting these freestanding phrases and paragraphs in automated voices via C.L.E.O*- a FlyGirl Super Computer, I believe layers of meaning are revealed that connect to poignant, lyrical, obscene, and often ridiculous modes of interpretation. Black Trash: A Sacred Melodrama is a work for video, sound, installation, and performance." *Calculated Lust Examination Operative (C.L.E.O)
January 16: Saturday Sessions features WERRRQ, an afternoon of performance and music
Date: Saturday, January 16, 2010 Time: 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM
P.S.1 invites Edwin Ramoran from Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art (Newark, NJ), to host and organize WERRRQ, an afternoon program of performance and music which is part of the ongoing Saturday Sessions series and Free Space program.
WERRRQ introduces emerging artists from the art, club, and ballroom scenes who work in music and sound, performance, sculpture, and video.
Featured artists: $10 Outfit (Jools Palmer and Nicole Jung) Neko Legacy International Jeffrey Ralston ( DEPUTY ) Kenya (Robinson) Jacolby Satterwhite
$10 Outfit is Nicole Jung (aka Khoom) and Jools Palmer. Together, they are a live PA act twisting together bass-driven beats, slinky vocals, and rootsy dance-floor grooves. They have performed at Body Hammer NYC and twice for the monthly Unisexi parties organized by Palmer & DJ Q-Raider. Jung started as a classical musician in Hawai’i. She received a BA in Music Technology from NYU. She has performed in many venues internationally and has worked as a sound designer for the Proto-type Theater, UNDER St. Marks, and Scott Davis. Palmer is a DJ, beat producer, and club party promoter living in New York. She has performed in dance clubs around the world including Centro-Fly in New York and Bump in Miami, and with many artists including DJs Disciple, Traxx, Lenoard Posso, SeanB, and Will Automagic.
Neko Legacy International is the young, up-and-coming commentator active with the House of Legacy International in New York. He will have a new CD out soon.
Jeffrey Ralston was born in Atlanta, GA in 1976 and currently lives in Brooklyn. He received his BFA in painting from Pratt Institute in 1999. His work is primarily sculptural, taking industrious materials and enhancing, or eliminating, their original structural purpose. Jeffrey's most recent projects consist of atmospheric installations, typically under the name DEPUTY, and most often experienced in the underground club environment. Ralston is on the faculty of The Joan Mitchell Foundation and the pre-college program at Pratt Institute.
Kenya (Robinson) is a self-taught artist from Gainesville, Florida. Inspired by a rich social community, her work is influenced by the use of mass consumer items as art material. A resident of Brooklyn, she is expanding her studio practice to include site-specific installation, printmaking, and video-sound-performance art. Her debut exhibition, HAIRPOLITIC: The Pursuit of Nappiness, was at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in 2008. She is a current resident of LMCC's WorkSpace program, a recipient of a Brooklyn Arts Council Re-Grant, and has received funding from the Hudson County Office of Art and Culture.
Jacolby Satterwhite was born in Columbia, South Carolina. He received his BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from University of Pennsylvania. He received the Cosby Fellowship to attend The Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture residency in 2009. Satterwhite has exhibited his multimedia works in numerous exhibitions in New York including Exit Art's Summer Mixtape Sessions & Labyrinth Wall exhibitions, Rush Arts Gallery, and Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art. He has also performed at The New Museum and P.S.1 with Terry Adkins and the Lone Wolf Recital. He's currently exhibiting at Rush Arts Gallery for the exhibition "The Mothership has Landed" curated by Derrick Adams.
Saturday Sessions is a new program of emerging performance art designed to introduce new performance artists to New York audiences. P.S.1 has had a long tradition of showcasing performance-based art, from the Butoh dance of Min Tanaka to the films of Jack Smith. This is a new formalized series presenting a younger generation of artists.
Free Space is a new collaborative initiative with artists and nonprofit arts institutions in which P.S.1 provides use of its gallery space for exhibitions, events, rehearsals, and other live presentations. Past participants include Marina Abramovic, Kalup Linzy and Printed Matter. Creative Time will be hosting Free Space on January 23 and 24.
For more information about P.S.1's programs and exhibitions, visit http://www.ps1.org.
For information about Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art, visit http://www.aljira.org. Currently at Aljira is "JORDAN EAGLES: HEMOSAPIEN", a solo exhibition of new blood works, on view through January 30, 2010.
I am preparing a performance piece in which the curators’ vision is inspired by sports (particularly boxing) and poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi (a friend of one of my fellow LMCC residents, Alicia Jo Rabbins) is approaching a current body of work in much the same fashion. It’s interesting reading her volume (Apocalyptic Swing) and her blog entries, as they connect with my own upbringing in a rabidly obsessed college football town (GO GATORS!). For a short time, in my early, early childhood, my father raised me as a single parent and I can still remember snatches of three audio artifacts: The theme to The MacNeil/Lehrer Report,The spoken intro toThundarr: The Barbarian, and the sneaker squeak of a professional basketball game. After moving to Gainesville, Florida I was thoroughly indoctrinated into the ways of The Gator and continue to enjoy the melodrama that is collegiate and professional sports (although without a television my exposure has been sporadic). In either case, I love her depiction of these quintessentially American towns and the nostalgic realities of the John Deere Store…
It was a spectacular time, well worth a trip to The Bronx! Organizers / Curators, Ronny Quevedo + Blanka Amezkua created an artful intersection of fun, family, youth, elders, music and the cathartic release of pinata busting. The full effect was felt by all those in attendance and a glimpse of this energy is captured by the images below.
Recent events have left me vulnerable to to my most romanticized tendencies. I can't help but hope for romantic love, despite my thorough intellectual thought experiments that diddle with a range of possibilities. It's been a while since I've been kissed- truly, deeply passionately- and I was struck by Artist Julie Laffin's use of the kiss as a art material.
Edwin Ramoran, the director of programs and exhibitions at Aljira Contemporary Art Center blessed me with a studio visit last week. As a function of his own curatorial practice, he has been recording his visits as a timely documentation of various segments of the contemporary Art World. I am studio visit #5. It's an interesting function of the art making process that reveals the common threads of an overall body of work. I've identified a few connecting strands in my own work over the past 4 months:
I like shiny things.
Folding, reflection, repetition...
Vertical suspension, figures prominently in the work I do.
Masks continue to intrigue me.
String, string, string...
The exploration of competitive beauty as a function of American culture.
Mass consumables, particularly those found at the dollar store...
Alyssa was my neighbor at my very first studio. Her wry sense of humor was a consistent reminder that you could do amazing work without taking the Art World too seriously. I was fascinated by her layered process that seamlessly linked her expertise in home design, ceramics, antiques, and textured knits. Come to my studio and you will find her famous milk bottle vases prominently displayed (they house my obsession with Ticonderoga pencils), and I hope to host a spring garden party with her luminous lanterns flickering warmly...
(see below for clickable images.)
Visit alyssaettinger.com to browse and purchase her handcrafted lifestyle objects.
I just watched Capitalism: A Love Story and The Corporation. After these proclamations of intention, these tenets of corporate strategy, I am compelled to compose my own manifesto of sorts…
In light of my personal situation, I am reminded of the difficult choices that this current brand of capitalism forces me to make. This conundrum is not mine alone, but a quagmire faced by the vast majority of Americans. Although I am not fully unemployed, my guaranteed (pre-tax) monthly salary is only 600 dollars a month, and that source of income is scheduled for termination on January 21, 2010. I have been job hunting since November of 2008 and as you can imagine I am combating hopelessness and struggling to maintain a sense of dignity and positivity. Fortunately, I am a believer in the ultimate justice of the universe and feel strangely optimistic about my chances of survival, in one of the most challenging economies in the world, New York City. On a number of occasions, just when I thought I would find myself utterly homeless and hungry, glittering circumstances present themselves, offering yet another stay of execution. I suppose, “God looks after fools, drunks, and little children.”
Neither a drunk or a child, I am a fool for creative expression, and after years of avoidance and denial, I have finally come to terms with my calling as an Artist. Nothing gives me more pleasure, or a more secure sense of purpose, than when the seed of an idea germinates into a physical, tangible something. I continue to suffer the well-intentioned/timid/prodding encouragement of my friends, which balances the general tsk-tsk-ing bewilderment of my family and buoys my evolving self-confidence.
One of the most interesting developments of my artistic career is that of my unexpected inclusion in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Residency program. I am surrounded by a host of talented individuals with layered bodies of work, impressive academic pedigrees and consistent sources of income J. Me? I am self-taught, with a previous professional life in the (dying) American fashion industry. Now, my daily commute includes a stroll down Wall Street, and the view from my (free) studio falls on Lady Liberty. I am still impressed by the apparent wealth of the financial executives and the luxury apartments that have claimed some of the surrounding buildings.
One part of me seriously despises these trappings, especially since they seem so far out of reach. While another side of me, the side that shyly explores the twinkle of Tiffany & Co. (from the inside!) wants a piece of that glamorous life. But only for a moment. Ultimately, I want to continue to do what I love and utilize my expertise. I want not to be homeless, I want to marry a caring man and not weep at the ugly proportions of incarceration and how privatization deepens the racialized view of criminality and strips my community of its potential. I don’t have to be mega-rich, but some security and comfortability would be awfully nice…
In the midst of all of this I am acutely aware that many of these same corporate forces fund my ability to create. Our residency studios are housed in a vacant office building- JP Morgan, Emblem Health, and Guardian Life are but a few of our close neighbors- and we each have imagined or connected with the moneyed collectors that will pay handsomely for our grand projects. By the same token, as critical thought is a hallmark of studio practice, we feel the hypocrisy of our situation on a regular basis.
I suppose that I am trying to explore these tensions in my work. That you can be repulsed and attracted simultaneously, and how you can justify whatever feeling is dominant, at any given moment, is a fascinating aspect of human nature. And so, I will justify the embrace of a positive outlook, despite the contradictory tension of these challenging circumstances. I will use my creative process as a conduit to inspire internal and community dialogue. I will not give up.
According to Pigments Through The Ages, "red is supposedly the first color perceived by Man", and while my limited research can neither confirm or deny this statement, the importance of this color in human cultural history is undeniable. Perhaps, it's an evolutionary hallmark alerting us to the preciousness of our own blood- a visceral warning to staunch the flow...
In either case, artist Eto Otitigbe and I are exploring site specific video projection with red (and black) as a conceptual touchstone. I've collected some images for inspiration, as well as some choice quotes to spark ideas.
RED
"We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language." - Joyce Carol Oates
"Like a cyclone, imperialism spins across the globe; militarism crushes peoples and sucks their blood like a vampire." - Karl Liebknecht
"Red is the ultimate cure for sadness.” - Bill Blass
“He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another's personality, marking vulnerable points.” - Ayn Rand
“Be on the alert, like the red ant that moves with its claws wide open."- Ugandan Proverb
BLACK
"It's really easy to get colors right. It's really hard to get black - and neutrals - right. Black is certainly a color but it's also an illusion." - Donna Karan
"I'm playing dark history. It's beyond black. I'm dealing with the dark things of the cosmos." - Sun Ra
"Remember the words of Chairman Mao: 'It's always darkest before it's totally black.'." - John McCain
"I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots." - Henry Miller
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