Art for Sale Page 2

ATLANTA, GA.- The High Museum of Art will organize and premiere the most comprehensive presentation of works by Atlanta-based artist Radcliffe Bailey beginning June 28, 2011. The exhibition “Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as Medicine” will highlight the artist’s experimentation with diverse media, showcasing sculptures, paintings, installations, works-on-paper, glass works and modified found objects. Comprising more than 25 works, “Memory as Medicine” will include new art created for the exhibition as well as works never before seen on public display. The exhibition will also juxtapose Bailey’s work with a display of classic African sculptures from the High’s permanent collection and selected loans of African art to show the influence of African aesthetic practices on the artist’s work.

“Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as Medicine,” organized by the High, will be on view in Atlanta from June 28 through September 11, 2011. The exhibition is scheduled to travel to the National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C. (presented in partnership with the National Museum of african american History and Culture); the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; the Museum for African Art, New York; and additional venues yet to be announced.

“In this exhibition, visitors will discover Radcliffe’s ability to a combine sculpture and painting, two- and three-dimensional forms and grand and intimate scales, creating works of art that are rich in texture, detail, color and, most importantly, meaning,” stated Michael E. Shapiro, the High’s Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr. Director. “The High is pleased to debut this exhibition in Atlanta, underscoring the Museum’s continued commitment to celebrating the talents and legacies of our local artists.”

The exhibition will present Bailey’s work divided into three main themes: “Water,” “Blues” and “Blood.” Works included in the “Water” group will feature the artist’s references to the Black Atlantic as a site of historical trauma as well as an artistic and spiritual journey. “Blues” will highlight works that illustrate the importance of music as a transcendent artform, including Bailey’s 1999 painting “Transbluesency,” which references a book of poems by Amiri Baraka and echoes the “Blues” theme. The third theme, “Blood,” will feature works focusing on the ideas of ancestry, race, memory, struggle and sacrifice. This section will further explore the artist’s engagement with African sculptures in tandem with his investigation of his own family’s DNA.

In 2006 Bailey learned his family’s ancestral links to the Mende people of Sierra Leone. This inspired the smallest, most intimate work he ever created―a miniature drawing done in ink and coffee on a piece of sheet music that features a Mende mask framed within a tiny red-velvet lined, 19th-century tintype case, as though a family portrait. This work will be on view in the exhibition alongside more recent works, including a new sculpture that has the smooth, curvilinear forms of Mende masks. It is made of wood and was repeatedly rubbed with finishing wax in a daily studio ritual. Minus the functional purpose of Mende masks, this work becomes a Brancusi-esque objet d’art, an inscrutable prop for a Neo-Dada-style, contemporary art world performance. Another 2010 work, “Clean-up,” is a painted wooden sculpture in the form of a 10-foot-high baseball bat. Bailey comments, “The reason why I made the bat so big was to beat down all the things that I confront. Baseball being one of my first passions, before art, the bat was like my paintbrush. In baseball, the fourth batter that comes up is the clean-up hitter.”

At the core of the exhibition will be seven sets of “medicine cabinet sculptures.” Their contents include a broad range of culturally charged objects, imagery and raw materials, from indigo powder to tobacco leaves to Georgia red earth. Just as Kongo minkisi sculptures from central Africa contain healing and protective medicine within mirrored packets, the socially cathartic contents of Bailey’s medicine cabinet sculptures are deeply recessed under reflective, tinted glass. These sculptures were conceived to link the too often disconnected histories of peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora and to emphasize collective experiences.

“Radcliffe Bailey’s art is consistently informed by a strong social and historical consciousness, and solidly grounded in family and community. The exhibition combines a rich, narrative content with a high-level of abstraction and poetic resonance to explore questions of history and memory,” said Carol Thompson, the High’s Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art and curator of the exhibition. “Bailey’s art traces the complex network of his ‘aesthetic DNA’ to create an antidote to cultural and historical amnesia.”

A number of works in the exhibition will highlight the artist’s penchant to animate his work with large-scale photographic reproductions of black-and-white prints given to him by his grandmother as well as historic photos he collects, in order to place african americans at the center of both American and world history. “I am interested in an Africanism that permeates our contemporary world but goes unnamed and is not talked about or fully addressed culturally,” stated Bailey. “I am interested in the impulse of that mysterious African force that propels black people wherever they are in the world.” Bailey strives to convey an African sensibility and spirituality that he says “exists in the tangible and the intangible.”

Opening and closing the exhibition will be several works that reference Èsù, the guardian of the crossroads and mediator of opposites who is honored throughout Yoruba regions of Africa and the African Diaspora. These early 21st-century works by Bailey resonate with the late 19th- or early 20th-century dance staff for Èsù from the Fred and Rita Richman Collection, also included in the exhibition. Caged African Finches will add a sound element to the exhibition.

Radcliffe Bailey
Radcliffe Bailey was born in 1968, in Bridgeton, New Jersey. He grew up in Atlanta, earning a bachelor’s degree in fine art from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991. From 2001 to 2006 Bailey taught at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia. He received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2004) and was a visiting faculty member at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2006). In 2008, he created large-scale glass works as a participant in the Toledo Museum of Art’s Guest Artist Pavilion Project (GAPP). His work is represented in leading museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. In 1994 Bailey’s work was included in “The Hale Woodruff Memorial Exhibition” at The Studio Museum of Harlem. In 1996 Bailey gained acclaim for his large-scale mural “Saints,” a commission for Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. “Saints” remains on view, welcoming travelers entering the airport at International Terminal E.

Posing Beauty in African American Art on View at Taubman Museum of Art

ROANOKE, VA.- The Taubman Museum of Art presents Posing Beauty in African American Culture as part of its summer exhibition schedule, along with works by James Grashow and Primitivo Suarez-Wolfe. Posing Beauty in African American Culture opened to the public on June 11, 2010 and will remain on view through August 22, 2010.

Posing Beauty in African American Culture explores the contested ways in which African American beauty has been represented in historical and contemporary contexts through photography. The 84 images in the exhibition challenge idealized forms of beauty in art by examining their portrayal and exploring a variety of attitudes about race, class, gender, popular culture, and politics as seen through the aesthetics of representation.

The first of three thematic sections, Constructing a Pose, considers the interplay between the historical and the contemporary and between self-representation and imposed representation, as well as the relationship between subject and photographer. The second thematic section, Body and Image, questions the ways in which our contemporary understanding of beauty has been constructed and framed through the body. The last section, Modeling Beauty and Beauty Contests, invites us to reflect upon the ambiguities of beauty, its impact on mass culture and individuals, and how the display of beauty affects the ways in which we see and interpret the world and ourselves.

With images dating from the 1890s to the present, Posing Beauty in African American Culture promises to transform the way we think about the history of African American visual culture. From posed studio portraits to dandies on parade to elegant debutantes, the exhibition constructs a bold narrative of the ever-changing idea of beauty, both female and male. Each photograph opens a window into an entire world of African American life. While celebrating ordinary people, the exhibition also is filled with photographs of the famous, from Josephine Baker to Lil’ Kim to James Brown and Serena Williams.

Artists in the exhibition include, among others, Carrie Mae Weems, Eve Arnold, Sheila Pree Bright, Renee Cox, Anthony Barboza, Bruce Davidson, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, Builder Levy, and Garry Winogrand.

Posing Beauty in African American Culture is curated by Deborah Willis, chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at New York University – Tisch School of the Arts, and organized by Curatorial Assistance, Pasadena, California.

Designer Pledges $2 Million to Antipoverty Program

By SHELLY BANJO

Designer Tommy Hilfiger is looking to bring the idea of ending global poverty into fashion.

On Wednesday, he will announce the formal launch of a five-year campaign to support Millennium Promise, a nonprofit founded by former private-equity financier Ray Chambers and economist Jeffrey Sachs in 2005 to help achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals to halve extreme poverty by 2015.

Earlier this month, Mr. Hilfiger visited Ruhiira, a rural community of 55,000 people in Uganda, where Millennium Village has worked since 2006.

“I never expected poverty to be so extreme,” Mr. Hilfiger says. “We saw firsthand how Millennium Village helps communities lift themselves out of poverty.”

Millennium Village uses community-led, science-based approaches to fight poverty. It seeks to address a broad spectrum of needs—from teaching farmers how to improve crop yields to providing access to clean water.

The charity says agriculture production in Ruhiira has nearly doubled and malaria prevalence among all ages has decreased from 17% to less than 1% since 2006.

Now Mr. Hilfiger plans to encourage his employees and customers to get involved. While no formal program has been created, he says interested employees will get the opportunity to travel to Ruhiira to volunteer.

In 2011, Mr. Hilfiger plans to launch a cause-marketing program to generate customer awareness and support for the program.

“We want to extend ourselves and use power of our brand to support efforts to end extreme poverty in our lifetime,” he says.

Mr. Hilfiger was born in Elmira, N.Y., where he opened his first store, the People’s Place, when he was 18 years old. In 1984, he founded Tommy Hilfiger Corp., which he took public in 1992 and then sold in 2006. He remains the brand’s principal designer.

During that time he created the Tommy Hilfiger Corporate Foundation, which began by focusing on education, health-related organizations and cultural youth programs in the U.S., supporting organizations such as the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation and the Race to Erase MS.

Through Millennium Promise, the foundation looks to “go global,” according to Mr. Hilfiger.

“Over the last 15 years we’ve developed our brand into a global brand and we wanted our giving to follow suit,” he says.

The $2 million pledged to Millennium Village project currently makes up the majority of the Tommy Hilfiger foundation’s assets, which the company funds on a year-to-year basis.

Write to Shelly Banjo at shelly.banjo@wsj.com

Sale Shines Light on Unheralded Art Legacy – Swann Galleries

By LAUREN FEDOR

Romare Bearden’s ‘Jazz Musician at Piano’ is expected to fetch $15,000-$25,000 at Swann Auction Galleries.

Lovers of art and music will unite this week at “Out of the Blue: Modern Art Jazz,” a sale at Swann Auction Galleries on East 25th Street. Thursday afternoon’s auction will feature 76 pieces by African-American artists who found inspiration in blues and jazz.

The sale, featuring works ranging from the figurative to the abstract, was planned to coincide with the CareFusion Jazz Festival, which rose this year from the ashes of George Wein’s defunct New York Jazz Festival. The pieces in the sale will be open for public exhibition through Thursday. Though Swann is not officially affiliated with CareFusion, the auction house has collaborated with the festival to reach out to jazz enthusiasts, according to the director of African-American Fine Art at Swann, Nigel Freeman. For example, the CareFusion web site lists Swann as a New York jazz “hot spot” alongside such landmarks as Birdland and the Village Vanguard; similarly, Swann links to the CareFusion festival on its own site.

“Out of the Blue” will be Swann’s seventh sale dedicated to art by African-Americans, a genre still relatively new to auction. Swann, which launched its African-American Fine Art department just three years ago, remains the only major auction house to regularly offer sales devoted to African-American art.”They really are the first auction house to have the kind of focus they have,” said Valerie Mercer, curator of the General Motors Center for African-American Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts, about Swann. “For so long, black artists’ work was not really appreciated or valued.”

Mr. Freeman said he expects works by Romare Bearden to be among the auction’s biggest sellers. “Back Porch Serenade” (1977), a collage composed of bright-colored papers with ink and colored pencil, could go for more than $60,000. Mr. Bearden (1911-1988) was best known for his semiabstract collages, which echo Cubist influences and are typically comprised of photographs and painted paper. Themes of jazz and the blues are common in his work. A Harlem-based artist who spent many days and nights with such jazz icons as Duke Ellington, Mr. Bearden even worked in a studio above the Apollo Theatre.

Robert O’Meally, a Columbia University English professor who examined Mr. Bearden’s collages in his 2008 book, “Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey,” said last week that the art world is “on the verge of recognizing a truly international artist.”

In its short history, Swann’s biggest winner has been Aaron Douglass, a Harlem Renaissance painter whose 1944 piece, “Building More Stately Mansions,” sold in 2008 for $600,000 and is currently housed at the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design. Two years earlier, one of his works sold at auction for $6,600.

Since 2007, Swann has introduced more than 100 black artists to auction. Mr. Freeman said at least eight artists whose works have yet to be offered will be showcased in “Out of the Blue.” They include Frank Stewart, the senior staff photographer for Jazz at Lincoln Center.

South Africa’s booming art market

From Robyn Curnow, CNN

Johannesburg, South Africa (CNN) — In recent years, African artists have seen their work increase in value as they attract global investors.

South Africa, in particular, has seen a significant rise in prices paid out for major works, according to Strauss and Co, a Johannesburg auction house selling 20th Century art.

Prices for major South African art are estimated to have increased by over 500 percent in the past five to 10 years, according to the auction house.

In recent years a new world record was set for a still-life by a South African artist when a stunning piece by Irma Stern sold for more than one million dollars.

Only halfway through the year, Strauss and Co. says it has already earned more from sales this year than in the whole of 2009.

Among the beneficiaries is Johannesburg-based William Kentridge, who is perhaps the closest the African art world has to a rock star.

He is one of Africa’s most commercially successful artists and his work is in demand around the globe.

But he acknowledged that the market for contemporary art is small. “A lot of work gets sold to institutions and wealthy patronizing collectors — patrons of the art,” Kentridge told CNN.

“The number of people that actually seriously collect, and are interested, and travel to exhibitions, and are knowledgeable about it is tiny. But they form the bulk of the collectors of contemporary art.”

In South Africa the pool of people buying serious art is even smaller. Most are white businesspeople. The country’s emerging black middle class and wealthy have not yet started buying South African contemporary art in the same way the newly monied classes snapped up art in China and India.

Ross Douglas organizes the Johannesburg Art Fair. He told CNN, “What we saw in China and India was that they suddenly got very rich and they started buying contemporary art at the same time the international art market started buying it. And one supported the other.

“In Africa there is very little local buying of contemporary art and that’s why artists go abroad. But that will change, slowly.”

There are signs that change is already happening. Young South African artists like Lawrence Lemaoana and Mary Sibanda earn a living from their art, which didn’t happen five years ago.

“As an artist you have to work extra hard,” said Sibanda. “You have to keep reinventing yourself because you can’t keep showing the same thing over and over again.”

They rely on galleries and the Johannesburg Art Fair — the only major art fair in Africa — to introduce their work to South Africans.

Lemaoana told CNN, “It is a great platform for introducing the normal public into walking into a gallery. Because one of the things we struggle with in South Africa is the idea of culture, and how culture is limited to a few people.

“I think it’s an interesting way of inviting Joe Soap to walk in and maybe buy an artwork.”

Before the economic meltdown, South African corporations such as big banks or mobile phone companies were the main investors in local art.

But gallery owners say those companies have cut back in the past two years, reasoning it might be difficult to explain to shareholders why they were buying art in the middle of the global credit crunch.

Those sentiments have been echoed in global art capitals such as New York and London.

“There was a huge bubble of extraordinary prices being paid for contemporary work, and that took a knock,” said Kentridge.

“It was astonishing how short that was. I think what happens when you have the crash in the art market the way you had in the late 1980s.

“There was a period in which it was very easy for galleries to survive and make money and do well; it’s much harder now.”

But at the top end of the market at least, things seem to be picking up. Which could be good news for those who were early investors in mid-20th century South African art.

source CNN……

The African sculptures mistaken for remains of Atlantis

By Stephanie Busari, CNN

London, England (CNN) — A hundred years ago when German explorer Leo Frobenius visited West Africa and came across some sculpted bronze heads and terracotta figures, he was sure he had discovered remains of the mythical lost city of Atlantis.

He refused to believe that the sophisticated and ornately carved bronze sculptures were made in Africa.

In his book, Voice of Africa, Frobenius wrote: “Before us stood a head of marvellous beauty, wonderfully cast in antique bronze, true to the life, incrusted with a patina of glorious dark green. This was, in very deed, the Olokun, Atlantic Africa’s Poseidon.”

“I was moved to silent melancholy at the thought that this assembly of degenerate and feeble-minded posterity should be the legitimate guardians of so much loveliness,” he added.

Frobenius was referring to the people who lived in the Kingdom of Ife and whose artists, in fact, created the sculptures over the course of some four centuries. Leading art experts believe they are among the most aesthetically striking and technically sophisticated in the world.

The Ife kingdom was believed to have flourished from the 12 to the 15 centuries in the lush forests of the lower Niger in West Africa in what is today the south western region of Nigeria.

Frobenius’ assertions helped reinforce long held assumptions of African art as primitive and inferior to European art.

However, 30 years later, Europeans were forced to revise these previously held assumptions when 18 brass and copper sculptures were discovered in the Ife kingdom. The works were later brought to London, where they were enthusiastically received.

A 1948 article in the Illustrated London News was headlined: “African art worthy to rank with the finest works of Italy and Greece” and “Donatellos of medieval Africa.”

As critic Michael Glover notes in the UK’s Independent newspaper, “At the same historical moment that Andrea del Verrocchio was doing his wonderfully painstaking, high-Renaissance drawing of a female head, anonymous artisans in Ife were working with brass, bronze, copper and terracotta to produce a series of exquisite heads that are not only the equal of Donatello in technical brilliance, but also just as naturalistic in their refinement. So much for African primitivism.”

Now, a worldwide touring exhibition is bringing the show to modern audiences in the first-ever show dedicated to the Ife sculptures.

The exhibition features more than 100 bronze, terracotta and stone sculptures, ranging in date from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries.

Many of these have never been on display outside Nigeria.

The sculptures are currently on display at the British Museum in London until 4th July and will move to the various states in the United States in August.

According to Neil Macgregor, Director of the British Museum, there was a conscious effort to display the Ife sculptures at the same time as an exhibition of Italian Renaissance drawings at the museum because he wanted to highlight the “relationship between Nigerian culture and the rest of the world.”

“We wanted to make the point that nobody when they learn European art history, studying Italy and Renaissance in the fourteenth, fifteenth centuries, is taught that at exactly the same time in West Africa, artistic production of the same level and the same quality is going on,” he said during a talk on Nigeria at the museum.

The sculptures depict human figures from a cross-section of Ife society and provide a fascinating insight into local customs and beliefs of the time.

However, not much is known about the origins of the Ife casts or who they were made for or for what purpose.

Macgregor said: “This is a history that is still very much in the making. And it’s not, of course, just the history of Ife. The bronze casting world of West Africa is an astonishingly large and rich one.

“The quality of the objects continues to astound and particularly the objects that have never been seen before,” Macgregor continued. “On any view they are a masterpiece, not just of observation but of sculpting and casting.”

source CNN….

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October Gallery

The Color We See But Don’t Speak: How Race Impacts Our Kids

The Color We See But Don’t Speak: How Race Impacts Our Kids

by Imani Perry
Professor in the Center for African American Studies, Princeton University

This week Anderson Cooper 360 is airing a four-part series on a CNN commissioned study that examines how children view skin color. The results of the study, led by University of Chicago professor Margaret Beale Spencer, show that white children show a high bias towards white skin, and black children show a less, but still significant bias toward white skin as well. The children who were subjects of the research were in two age groups, 4-5 and 9-10.

I must say that the study, while heartbreaking, is not surprising. I am the mother of two African American boys, ages 4 and 6. In our household we talk about race frequently, we celebrate African American literature, music, and art. We teach appreciation for our culture and other cultures. We immerse them in the beauty of our ethnic tradition. However, even with all of this deliberate effort, it is a serious uphill battle to work against the image of race they are exposed to on a daily basis.

My elder son repeatedly comments on the marginality or complete absence of Black characters in virtually all children’s television programming except what he, of his own accord, calls “black shows.” He already knows that he is designated as the sidekick in this society. So do his classmates.

But more than that, he knows that for Black characters, lighter skin is valued, particularly on programming for tweens. It is even more dramatic for girls. I cannot recall the last time I saw a brown or dark skinned black girl on a mainstream children’s television show besides that lone wolf of racial inclusion Sesame Street. Even when the parents are dark skinned, the girls are significantly lighter. The same issue exists in advertising in children’s magazines and catalogs.

When Harry Reid’s comment about Obama’s light skin and absence of “Negro dialect” hit the media, my first thought was of children and how they probably also knew that Obama’s lighter skin made a difference to many of the adults around them. After all, it clearly matters when it comes to the celebrities we teach them to admire, and even for the cartoon characters we entertain them with.

What happens on television and in print media gets repeated out in the world. I recently took my boys to the beauty supply store one day because I needed to buy some barrettes. They marveled at the rows and rows of long flowing wigs and weaves in this store catering to Black women. In that moment they learned that for many Black women hair that looks and feels like something completely different from what grows out of their heads is vastly preferred. And they were being taught something about what the world considers beautiful. How much will it matter, I wondered, that I model a celebration of our hair and skin, with a world speaking against me?

There are times when, at the bookstore, we have opened children’s books dedicated to some hero in African American history, and found the troubling phrase “a good slave master” as in “Henry Box Brown had a good master” as though there wasn’t a fundamental evil to holding people in life long inherited bondage. What does it mean to a Black child when we soft pedal the most inhumane feature of the Black experience in the United States?

My children are often witnesses when we (parents, grandparents, other adult caretakers) experience racist micro-aggressions: the change that is dropped on the counter instead of returned to the hand, the failure of retail sales people to make eye contact, the clutched purses, the rude responses, the greetings that we offer that are not returned, the clerks who follow us in stores. They see the adults who love and care for them, who diligently teach them to be kind and respectful and hard working, treated unfairly on the basis of race. This experience is normal for children of color in the United States.

All of our children see race. They see the differences in the way we are depicted and treated. They see the gaps in our socioeconomic conditions that are so highly influenced by race. When we don’t talk to them about race and inequality, the only way they have to make sense of it all is to assume that there is a greater human value for those who by accident of birth are white.

I am a professor in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. By the time I get to talk to young people about race they are on the brink of adulthood. They are formed in many ways. But each day in the classroom with them yields so much. My students are bubbling over with the desire to learn, understand and make sense of race: this taboo subject that has been around then every single day. I immerse them in a great deal of scholarly research and analysis of race, to allow them to develop deep understandings of how it has operated and how it continues to matter. I am appreciative that these conversations are a central part of my life’s work. However, I hope that this CNN series will encourage parents, schools and community organizations to begin these conversations with young people sooner, to demand better from our media and our communities, and to continue to educate ourselves along with our children, about race.

source: Huffington Post & CNN

New Art from LaShun Beal – Basket of Apples

June 21, 2010

New Art from LaShun Beal
Basket of Apples

Giclee on Paper or Canvas
Edition size= 50

Image size=18″w x 24″h

$150

LaShun Beal, born in 1962, is a native of Detroit. He now resides in the Houston, TX area. Although he’s taken a few classess, he has no formal art training and really considers himself to be a self-taught artist. Beal was adventurous in his youth and wanted to see the world. Joining the United States Marines gave him a great opportunity to do so.

Beal’s subject matter revolves around female subjects. His style depicts the many differences of African American women. Over the last few years he’s developed his signature Universal Women character which has came to be associated with his name.

more…

The Florida Highwaymen Artists

June 20, 2010April 25, 2012

The Florida Highwaymen Artists were the beginning of Florida’s contemporary art tradition, and are credited for the beginning of the “Indian River School” art movement. They developed their own individual techniques and captured waterscapes, backcountry marshes, and inlets the way they were before recent tourism develpments. From the beginning, there were people who collected Florida Highwayman art and paintings. However only in recent years has the recognition of their skill and their story caused their paintings to skyrocket in value. In 2004, twenty-six individuals were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame as “Florida Highwaymen.”

The following is a list of the Florida Highwaymen Artists:

Curtis Arnett
Hezekiah Baker †
Al Black
Ellis Buckner †
George Buckner †
Robert Butler
Mary Ann Carroll
Johnny Daniels †
Willie Daniels
Rodney Demps
James Gibson
Alfred Hair †
Issac Knight
Robert L. Lewis
John Maynor
Roy McLendon
Alfonso Moran †
Harold Newton †
Lemuel Newton
Sam Newton
Livingston Roberts †
Willie Reagan
Cornell Smith
Charles Walker
Sylvester M. Wells
Charles Wheeler

† deceased

The Mountain of Miracles Cleous Young

June 20, 2010April 25, 2012

The Mountain of Miracles.

Cleous Young, aka CY, is the creative thinker behind the brand The Mountain of Miracles. Young has not only introduced the market to an interactive CD-ROM, but also one that is Eco-Friendly. Young’s new vision is to produce books and other products that are friendly to our environment. Cleous Young has a new love and passion for the Earth, Education and the act of Faith. Therefore, he is creatively adding these three impactful elements in his products and endeavors, which correlates to the God given Purpose of his life.

Martha’s Vineyard African Am. Film Festival 8/11

The Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival
The film festival is August 11th – 14th

Stephanie’s enthusiasm for event planning combined with Floyd’s passion for filmmaking was the foundation for Run and Shoot Filmwork’s Martha’s Vineyard African-American Film Festival. Founded in 2001, the festival is one of the fastest growing film festivals in the country.

In 1999, Stephanie became the Marketing Director at Larry Flynt’s CODE Magazine, a short lived lifestyle magazine for men of color. Her marketing impact was immediate as she created strategic alliances with top-notch celebrities and luxury brands. It was there that she realized that her calling was in event planning.

She eventually formed her own pr/event planning company (Crescendo) and worked extensively with such clients as Martell Cognac, Biz Markie, HBO, Showtime and Vangaurd Media.

Upon graduating from Howard University, Floyd immediately began working in the camera department of acclaimed director Spike Lee on the film “Mo’Better Blues”.

After working on the 1st season of the award winning television drama “Law and Order”, Floyd continued working with ASC Cinematographer/Director, Ernest Dickerson and Spike Lee on features including “Jungle Fever”, “Malcolm X” and “Clocker”.

Mr. Lee began to use Floyd as his cinematographer on special projects and music videos such as Gangstarr’s/ “Loungin” and Sony Music’s State of Art / “Beating Heart” music video which was photographed in Paris, France. Floyd is also credited on feature films Malcolm X and Get on the Bus, having shot additional footage.

Additionally, he photographed comedian Chris Rock’s short film and directorial debut entitled “Too Nice” and a Anti-Violence PSA for HBO featuring Academy Award Nominee Queen Latifah.

Having worked on several feature films, award winning music videos and episodic television, Floyd segued into the television commercial arena.

After several years of study, Floyd has begun to flourish as a Commercial Director/Cinematographer. An avid sports fan, he photographed and directed several spots for the NBA Playoffs for NBC Sports.

Since establishing his creative outlet, RUN AND SHOOT FILMWORKS, INC., Floyd Rance has proceeded to produce outstanding visual work for several clients including, HBO, Martell Cognac, Reebok (Allen Iverson and NY Giants) and Footlocker.

For more information click here!!

Our Love of John Scott thru 10/31 LA Museum

OUR LOVE OF JOHN T. SCOTT
March 25 – October 31, 2010

This personal look at the New Orleans artist’s life, art work, journey and private reflections examines both John Scott’s art practice and the people he influenced. Included are artist Bill Pajaud (who corresponded with Scott on napkins;) good friend and musical influence, Ellis Marsalis; artist Dewey Crumpler; artist Richard Wyatt, and other contemporaries who shared journeys together through notes, film clips, letters, intimate photographs and videos. The music he listened to in his studio resonates throughout the exhibition. This prolific artist worked in a wide variety of media and the exhibition includes lyrical sculptures, paintings and four by-six-foot woodcut blocks used to make large-scale prints.

This exhibition has been made possible through the generous support of Roosevelt and Paula Madison.

more………………..

Baltimore Events and Festivals 2010

Baltimore Events and Festivals 2010

Baltimore Farmers’ Market & Bazaar
Fresh fruits, vegetables, breads, smoked meats, cheeses, arts & crafts, and more fill the state’s largest producers-only market, Sundays, May 2-December 19, 7am-sell out (usually noon).

All events for 2010 more…………….

Artists Marketplace 6/26/10 Baltimore