Brandeis to sell school’s art collection, Waltham, MA

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Rocked by a budget crisis, Brandeis University will close its Rose Art Museum and sell off a 6,000-object collection that includes work by such contemporary masters as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Nam June Paik.

The move shocked local arts leaders and drew harsh criticism from the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries. Rose Art Museum director Michael Rush declined comment this evening, saying he had just learned of the decision.

Brandeis is also discussing a range of sweeping proposals to bridge a budget deficit that could be as high as $10 million, such as reducing the size of the faculty by 10 percent, increasing undergraduate enrollment by 12 percent to boost tuition revenue, and overhauling the undergraduate curriculum by eliminating individual academic programs in favor of larger, interdisciplinary divisions.

Other plans under consideration include requiring students to take one summer semester, allowing the university to expand its student body without overcrowding, and adding a business program. The changes would take place, at the earliest, in 2010.

“This is not a happy day in the history of Brandeis,” President Jehuda Reinharz said tonight. “The Rose is a jewel. But for the most part it’s a hidden jewel. It does not have great foot traffic and most of the great works we have, we are just not able to exhibit. We felt that, at this point given the recession and the financial crisis, we had no choice.”

Brandeis said the museum would be closed late this summer. It was founded in 1961; a new wing designed by celebrated architect Graham Gund was added in 2001.

Announcement of the closing came as Rush was searching for a chief curator. A leading expert on video art, he had arrived in 2005 with plans to expand the museum. He also launched a full scale analysis of the museum’s value by Christie’s auction house. Dennis Nealon, the university’s director of public relations, would not say how much the collection is worth.

Experts on university art collections said the move was unusual, but not unexpected.

“Clearly, what’s happening with Brandeis now is that they decided the easiest way is to look around the campus and find things that can be capitalized,” said David Robertson, a Northwestern University professor who is president of the Association of College and Univertsity Museums and Galleries. “It’s always art that goes first.”

But there is no precedent for selling an art collection of the Rose’s stature. Internationally recognized, the collection is strong in American art of the 1960s and 1970s and includes works by Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Morris Louis, and Helen Frankenthaler.

“I’m in shock,” said Mark Bessire, the recently named director of the Portland Museum Of Art. “And this is definitely not the time to be selling paintings, anyway. The market is dropping. I’m just kind of sitting here sweating because I can’t imagine Brandeis would take that step.”

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From Africa to America: Tubman African American Museum, Macon, GA

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Title: From Africa to America
Artist: Wilfred Stroud
Date: 1988 – 1996
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

A musician, storyteller/oral historian, the traditional Griot was the product, or rather the embodiment of West African oral traditions. A native of Macon, Georgia, Wilfred R. Stroud embodies many of the qualities of the traditional West African Griot. But where the Griots of old preserved history through recitation and song, Stroud uses oil and acrylic paint on canvas to illustrate the history and contributions of African Americans in Macon and beyond.

Wilfred Stroud’s best-known work is the mural From Africa to America. Measuring 68 inches tall by 55 feet long, the work is installed on the first floor of the Tubman Museum. A signature piece in the Museum’s collection, the work was commissioned in 1988 with funds provided by the Macon Arts Alliance and the City of Macon. At the time of its creation, Stroud stated that, “The purpose of this mural is to present a visual history of the black man and woman from the earliest times in Africa to the present times in America. The panels focus attention upon the impact of outstanding persons, and events that made a change in the lives and conditions of black people in particular, and the world in general.”

To learn more about this beautiful murals, click here.

Arna Bontemps African American Museum, Alexandria, Louisiana

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Arna Wendell Bontemps

Arna Bontemps – a noted Black poet, author, anthologist, librarian – was born in Alexandria, Louisiana on October 13, 1902. He was baptized at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral. Arna, son of Paul Bismark and Marie Pembrooke Bontemps, lived in a typical turn-of-the-century, middle class, wood-frame house at the corner of Ninth and Winn Streets. As a youth he moved with his family to California as a part of the great migration of that period.

Arna attended public schools and graduated at age 17 from Pacific Union College (PUC). He completed his degree in three years. While in college, Bontemps became interested in writing. He wrote poetry, essays, short stories, fiction, non-fiction, and children’s books.

Arna Bontemps was also a teacher in a private academy in New York City. He received professional training in librarianship at the Graduate School at the University of Chicago and served as the librarian at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He and his wife had six children.
Bontemps’ writings were greatly influenced by his memories of Alexandria, his cultural and social roots. As an adult, he returned to the South because of certain changes he observed as “Jim Crow” laws were being eradicated. Bontemps would later write in his novel, Black Thunder, “Time is not a river. Time is a pendulum…intricate patterns of recurrence in…experience and in…history”.

Bontemps is credited with writing over 20 books, plays, and anthologies and was considered the leading authority on the Harlem Renaissance. He was part of a core of young Black writers who led the “New Negro” movement. Bontemps wanted a front row seat to view and participate in the stirrings of jazz, theater and literature taking place in Harlem. His scholarly interest in fostering a new appraisal of his race and reevaluation of the Black man’s place in American history is just a part of his legacy. His children’s books are unique and his poetry and writings convey the rhythms and richness of the African American culture which was to influence a number of writers who followed him. (Edwin Blair. “Literary Habitats.” Preservation in Print. September 1996.)

The recent resurgence of interest in Bontemps’ unpublished children’s stories by Oxford University Press speaks to his universal appeal. The 1996 Academy Award nominated short film, “A Tuesday Morning Ride,” is an adaptation of Bontemps’ 1933 short story, “A Summer Tragedy”. The revival of his play, “St. Louis Woman,” written with Countee Cullen and adapted from Bontemps’ first novel God Sends Sunday, gives further credence to his literary genius.

When Arna Bontemps addressed the end of cultural colonialism, he wrote of the Harlem Renaissance writers and of their counterpart, the “lost generation”: “Once they find a (united) voice, they will bring a fresh and fierce sense of reality to their vision of human life…. What American literature needs at this moment is color, music, gusto….” (Harlem Renaissance Remembered)

Arna Bontemps African American Museum
1327 3rd Street
Alexandria, Louisiana 71301

Admission is FREE (Donations Welcome)

Book Review: "Come To Win" By Venus Williams

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Venus Williams has become a household name. Venus is synonymous with success. At the young age of 30, she has become a huge success in a number of ways. Most people are familiar with her career in tennis. She is a two-time Olympic Gold medalist and she has won numerous Wimbledon titles. In addition to her success as an athlete, Venus is a founding ambassador for the WTA-UNESCO Gender Equality Program, which addresses worldwide gender issues and she launched a successful clothing line in 2007. Now she has added “Author” to her many professional titles. In July, Venus released her new book, Come to Win.

This book shows how to turn a competitive spirit and an athletic background into success in other areas of life. Venus explores how her drive for tennis will continue to help off the court in her post-tennis career. She draws on experiences of others who got their start in sports and who are now on top of their profession. She discusses with them what principles they gained from playing competitive sports and how that has helped them in the business world.

Venus features nearly fifty business leaders, politicians, doctors, and artists. Some of the forerunners featured in this book are: Ken Chenault, Meg Whitman, Phil Knight, Jack Welch, Condoleezza Rice, Bill Bradley, Marcus Samuelsson, Magic Johnson, Robin Roberts, Bill Clinton and Vera Wang. Here is an excerpt from the portion of the book that features Vera Wang –

“Vera Wang is a fashion designer. She launched her eponymous label in 1990. She served as design director of women’s accessories for Ralph Lauren, and spent sixteen years at Vogue, where she became the magazine’s youngest editor. She was born in New York City and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a degree in art history. She says: ‘I fell at Nationals in 1968… It is a lot of pressure when thirty or forty thousand people are going “Oooh” together and you’re sitting on the ice. It’s the same with fashion. I’ve had a show that I thought represented a great effort, and a certain reviewer killed it. . . . It’s not unlike sports where one is subjectively judged! . . . It’s the ups and downs of it. You have to be passionate to stay in it. If you don’t love it, why put yourself through it?'”

The advice in Come to Win is knowledge every aspiring professional and entrepreneur will want to read. It’s also a very useful tool for parents and coaches looking to build confidence and discipline in their children. All who read this book will greatly benefit from the experience of Venus and other professionals.

Lynia White is a Columnist, Book Reviewer and the Founder of The Quality Corner Bookstore – www.thequalitycorner.com. For more book reviews by Lynia, visit her blog at http://thequalitycorner.blogspot.com.

To hear more about this review, click here.

African Art World Nestled in Tenafly

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TENAFLY, N.J. — You can count the number of American public museums devoted entirely to African art on a few fingers.
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Ruby Washington/The New York Times
An installation view at the African Art Museum of the SMA Fathers, in Tenafly, N.J., showing a 10-foot-high carved figure of Salif Keita, the 1960s Malian soccer hero.
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A Yoruba dance mask, with a mini-zoo on top, from Nigeria.
There’s the National Museum of African Art in Washington. And the Museum for African Art in New York, reopening in a new Fifth Avenue home next spring. And there’s a third you’ve probably never heard of, the African Art Museum of the SMA Fathers here.
This museum is small and unorthodox in its setting: a stained-glass-windowed hall attached to a Roman Catholic church. But it’s the real African deal, with a collection covering the continent, top to bottom, coast to coast, old to new.
If you’re in New York City, you’ll have to cross the George Washington Bridge to find it. But if you’re looking for visual magic — a Yoruba dance mask with a mini-zoo on top; a brocaded body-wrap from Ivory Coast that seems to float on air; or a 10-foot-high figure of the 1960s Malian soccer hero Salif Keita dressed in team colors and cut from a single tree — you’ll have come to the right place.
And a pretty place it is, the leafy residential campus of a religious order called the Society of African Missions, but better known as the SMA Fathers, with the initials being the order’s name in Latin, Societatis Missionum ad Afros.
The order was founded in Lyon, France, in 1856 by Melchior de Marion Brésillac. A precocious young cleric, he was made a bishop at 29 and set up a network of missions in India before traveling to Africa to do the same. His time there was brief: six weeks after arriving, he died of yellow fever.
But his order was long-lived. It set down roots in present-day Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia and Tanzania and maintained headquarters in Europe and the United States. The Tenafly seminary, which opened in 1921, was intended as a training center for African-American clergy. The racial politics of the time thwarted that plan, but two decades later, after an infusion of immigrant Irish priests, Tenafly became the SMA’s American home base.
Part of the order’s mandate was to embrace and preserve indigenous cultures. Among other things, this entailed acquiring art wherever it was found in Africa but also commissioning African artists to create new pieces based on Christian themes. One priest, Father Kevin Carroll (1920-1993), an anthropologist and photographer, requisitioned such work from some of the most celebrated Yoruba sculptors of the day.
During a century and a half, the SMA amassed some 50,000 items and built museums to hold them: two in France and one each in Italy and the Netherlands. The Tenafly branch, installed in its present setting in 1980, is now incorporated as a nonprofit institution technically independent of the order and has its own modest holdings of around 1,000 objects. Some came through missionaries, but many were donated by a generous group of local private collectors who have also backed a series of strong thematic exhibitions during the tenure of the museum’s director, Robert J. Koenig.
These donations account for much of what’s in the current show, the first of two year-long permanent-collection displays. They are defined by geography, one of several artificial categories used to package African art for consumption, others being tribes and traditions. But when you have holdings of limited examples of many different kinds of things, what other presentation can you use?
Anyway, geographic delineation is quite approximate here: “Guinea Coast and the Sudan” is really Chad to South Africa. The exhibition labels avoid hard-and-fast alignment of peoples, places and styles. And overarching themes, when introduced, are lightly applied. On the whole this is a show about object-by-object variety.
There are plenty of so-called classic sculptural types. Dan masks from Liberia have Valentine-heart faces exquisite and inscrutable enough to make sense on the streets of Goldoni’s 18th-century Venice. Equally familiar and enchanting are helmet masks carved for Mende women’s societies in Sierra Leone: petite of feature, high of forehead, demure of expression, each an ideal of feminine beauty.
Dogon dance masks depicting birds, antelopes, rabbits and people are the exact opposite of demure. With their paint-freckled surfaces, fiber wigs and movable parts, they’re a chorus of cawing, braying, snuffling, singing beings, visual art as visual noise. You can imagine what they would have looked like on costumed performers in constant motion, twirling, dipping and raising dust.

AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE TO APPEAR AT HAVANA INTERNATIONAL BALLET FESTIVAL, NOVEMBER 3-6, 2010, Havanna, Cuba

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PERFORMANCES TO MARK THE COMPANY’S FIRST APPEARANCE

IN CUBA IN MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS

7/29/2010 – American Ballet Theatre will travel to Cuba to perform as part of the Havana International Ballet Festival, November 3-6, 2010, it was announced today by ABT’s Executive Director Rachel Moore.

The 22nd Annual Havana International Ballet Festival honors Alicia Alonso, Director of the National Ballet of Cuba and former ABT ballerina, on the occasion of her 90th birthday. American Ballet Theatre’s tour to Cuba comes at the personal invitation of Ms. Alonso. The Festival will include two repertory performances by ABT on November 3 and 4 and two additional Gala performances, November 5 and 6, featuring ABT Principal Dancers and Soloists. In honor of Ms. Alonso, ABT’s repertory in Cuba will feature Theme and Variations, a ballet created by George Balanchine for ABT in 1947 with Ms. Alonso and Igor Youskevitch originating the leading roles. The Company’s performances will also include Alexei Ratmansky’s Seven Sonatas and Jerome Robbins’ Fancy Free.

American Ballet Theatre last performed in Cuba in 1960 during the Company’s 20th Anniversary year. The engagement included now legendary works from ABT’s repertory including Billy the Kid, Theme and Variations, Fall River Legend, Jardin aux Lilas, Fancy Free, Les Sylphides and Graduation Ball.

“This historic visit to Cuba is significant on many levels,” said Rachel Moore. “It honors ABT’s past by recognizing the contributions of Alicia Alonso and looks to the future by establishing an international dialogue with our artistic counterparts in Cuba.”

To learn more about this event , click here.

For ticket information, click here.

Rwandan reggae spreads musical message of peace

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Kigali, Rwanda (CNN) — Rwanda’s not a nation typically recognized for its music scene. But if you spend a little time there you’ll find a selection of talented musicians ready to emerge.

One of the country’s up-and-coming bands, Jah Doves, offer listeners modern-day reggae mixed with traditional Rwandan beats.

The six-man band is especially known for its bold lyrics. Every song has a meaning that conveys a positive message. It’s the reason they call themselves Jah Doves. Doves symbolize peace and harmony, both traits the band wants to emulate in their song writing.

“We all like the kind of music which has the good message,” bass player Ras Patrick told CNN, “which is not about shooting each other, which is building not destroying.”

Jah Doves started off as a group of friends who used music as a way to deal with the trauma of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. They practiced with broken instruments at home or in any free rooms they could access for a few hours. The group often played just for fun, hoping to land gigs at events or parties around the country.

Gallery: Rwanda’s rising musical stars

In 2008 Jah Doves were spotted by Dicken Marshall, a musician and music producer from the UK who had a special interest in the African music scene. He heard the group practicing in Kigali, and couldn’t walk away.

“The first time I saw Jah Doves they were loud — really, really loud,” Marshall told CNN. “But they had a really nice interaction between the different members.

“So the sound was terrible and they weren’t particularly in tune but their energy and the singing was fantastic,” he said. “I think that’s what really hit me, and I just knew, okay, I want to work with these guys.”

Jah Doves weren’t the only Rwandan artists Marshall noticed with lots of talent and no tools to make it grow. There were no professional studios in Kigali, no trustworthy record labels, and none of the musicians worked under contract.

“There is a lot of talent being exploited in one way or another — you know, not being paid, many people plagiarizing many people’s work,” he said. “There is also a real lack of structure in terms of royalty collection. There is none.”

Marshall saw an opportunity to protect Rwanda’s musicians and do business at the same time. He built two studios and set up set up the Rafiki Records label, where musicians are entitled to take home 50 percent of profits they earn — much higher than most labels offer.

Inside Africa: Niger’s “desert blues” Video

“My ultimate goal for the label is for the artist to be able to have a sustainable career and the label to be able to grow, and the ethic behind the label to be a concept that people can trust and that people can expand on,” he said.

This is good news for groups like Jah Doves. They are trying to take their talent to bigger and better places, and these days the group is busy recording their second album. One of the songs on the album is a mellow tune called “Agate.”

“Agate in the Rwandan language means piece of wood,” explained Patrick. “So this song is a small story about all the musicians who used to play with the old instruments and they found themselves in a new world where there are new keyboards and guitars that are amplified.

If you want to make music you can make it — doesn’t matter if you’re using old things or new instruments.
–Ras Patrick, Jah Doves

“The song we composed says if you want to make music you can make it — doesn’t matter if you’re using old things or new instruments.”

One of the old-style musicians Jah Doves refer to in this song is Sophie Nzayisenga. She’s another up-and-coming singer who works under Marshall’s Rafiki Records. And her music offers a traditional twist.

Nzayisenga plays an instrument called the inanga. It’s a traditional Rwandan guitar — a long piece of wood with one string wrapped around it 12 times.

“My father played it, my mother was played it and everyone in the family plays inanga,” she told CNN.

“I learned the inanga when I was very young. I liked it then and still like it today.”

Her lyrics are never about love; instead she chooses to use her music to sing about nature and good governance.

Nzayisenga is one of the few musicians left in Rwanda who can play the inanga and she is the only woman who plays professionally.

With a little exposure via the Rafiki Records website and contacts in the music industry, Marshall hopes to bring Rwanda’s love for traditional instruments back to life.

“People don’t know about the instrumentation that is here and the fact that the art of playing those instruments is dying,” Marshall said.

And it might just be working. Nzayisenga has recently been picked up by some of Rwanda’s mainstream radio stations. Interviews and live singing sessions with the musician have been broadcast live around the country’s airwaves.

Marshall has high hopes for all his musicians. He says the one thing they have in common is music with meaning.

“Now we work with R & B artists, we work with hip-hop artists, Jah Doves, the Sophie’s, but it’s more about how they work together to create something different, and carrying a message that maybe hasn’t come across before.”

A message he hopes Rafiki Records will take around the world.

To learn more about this article, click here.

Amy Grant to combine tour and art fundraisers, tour starting in Atlanta, GA.

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Amy Grant will tour 10 cities this fall, playing small concerts and hosting an art gallery charity event at each show.

Entitled the “Pieces of Our Lives” tour, the shows will raise money for Compassion International, a charity that supports children who live in poverty.

“Anytime you can combine music, art and a great cause, I think you have something very special. The evenings are really about telling stories, singing songs and sharing art –- all to benefit the lives of students and children in need,” Grant said through a news release.

Each show will be limited to 300 patrons and tickets are $300 each.

Cities that will be host to events are Atlanta, Georgia; Austin, Texas; Chicago, Illinois; Dallas, Texas; Houston, Texas; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Nashville, Tennessee; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Orlando, Florida; and St. Louis, Missouri.

To learn more about this wonderful tour, click here.

Art: The Twenty/ Anticipated shows for Fall 2010, New York, NY

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Our most anticipated

Publish Post

shows of fall.

MUSEUMS

1. “Lee Friedlander: America by Car”
Friedlander, one of the great American street photographers, started shooting this deceptively casual-looking series in 1995, using his rental car’s windows, windshield, and rearview mirrors to frame the sights and people he encountered on his cross-country rambles. Whitney Museum of American Art; Sept. 4–Nov. 28.

2. “Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, 1736–1783: From Neoclassicism to Expressionism”
The artist’s first Stateside exhibition will focus on his “character heads”—wonderfully manic busts of men cringing, shrieking, and smiling (said to have originated after Messerschmidt suffered a breakdown). Neue Galerie; Sept. 16–Jan. 10.

3. “Shifting the Gaze: Painting and Feminism”
A mini-survey of the growing, changing world of feminist painting since the sixties, starring such artists as Hannah Wilke, Lee Lozano, Eva Hesse, and Nancy Spero. The Jewish Museum; Sept. 12–Jan. 30.

4. “Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–1936”
A studied look at the ways in which European artists (including Picasso and Matisse), architects, and designers returned to classical motifs and imagery (columns, robes, chiseled jawlines) while seeking tranquility between the wars. Guggenheim Museum; Oct. 1–Jan. 9.

5. “The Big Picture: Abstract Expressionist New York”
A sweeping survey of the Cedar Tavern crowd at its zenith. Drawn entirely from MoMA’s supreme permanent collection, which includes the best of the best: Pollock, Mitchell, de Kooning, Rothko. Museum of Modern Art; Oct. 3–Apr. 25.

6. “The Last Newspaper”
Just like the rest of us, the New Museum is trying to make sense of the speed of information. Artwork from the likes of William Pope.L, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Aleksandra Mir will be on view, along with an interactive “newsroom” that actually cranks out a weekly printed paper. The New Museum; Oct. 6–Jan. 9.

7. “Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968”
A new survey that acknowledges the queens of Pop, long considered secondary to the guys. On view: Yayoi Kusama, Martha Rosler, Vija Celmins, Faith Ringgold, and Marisol. Brooklyn Museum; Oct. 15–Jan. 9.

8. “John Baldessari: Pure Beauty”
The first major U.S. exhibition in twenty years devoted to the SoCal legend—from his photo-collages to wonderfully weird videos like his cheerful, tone-deaf Baldessari Sings LeWitt, from 1972. (See YouTube for a preview.) Metropolitan Museum of Art; Oct. 20–Jan. 9.

9. “Grain of Emptiness: Buddhist-Inspired Contemporary Art”
Meditative installations from German conceptualist Wolfgang Laib; Atta Kim’s photographs of a melting Buddha ice sculpture; and Theaster Gates’s short film of African-American Buddhist monks partaking in their morning rituals. Rubin Museum of Art; Nov. 5–Apr. 11.

10. “The Global Africa Project”
A medley of art, textiles, furniture, and clothing made by some 60 African artists and artisans. Look for the show within the show, spotting all the African-born aesthetics that pop up in cutting-edge design. The Museum of Arts and Design; Nov. 17–May 15

To learn more about the other museums lised, click here.

Groundbreaking and Internationally known Artist Justin Bua

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Groundbreaking artist Justin BUA is internationally known for his best-selling collection of fine art posters–The DJ being one of the most popular prints of all time. Born in 1968 in NYC’s untamed Upper West Side and raised between Manhattan and East Flatbush, Brooklyn, BUA was fascinated by the raw, visceral street life of the city. He attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Performing Arts and complemented his education on the streets by writing graffiti and performing worldwide with breakdancing crews. BUA went on to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California where he earned a B.F.A in Illustration.

Starting in the world of commercial art, BUA designed and illustrated myriad projects, from skateboards and CD covers to advertising campaigns. He developed the look and feel of the opening sequence for MTV’s Lyricist Lounge Show, EA Sports video games NBA Street and NFL Street, and the world of Slum Village’s award winning music video “Tainted” among others. He designed the BUA line of apparel and a limited edition shoe line with PF Flyers that sold out completely. Currently, he teaches figure drawing at the University of Southern California, while continuing to be a leading innovator in both the fine and commercial art worlds. BUA’s energetic and vocal worldwide fan base ranges from former presidents, actors, musicians, professional athletes, and dancers, to street kids and art connoisseurs.

In his first book, The Beat of Urban Art, BUA lays out his unique vision, melding urban rhythms, graffiti, and classical art training. This visually arresting book is about his life, his work, and the birth of Hip-Hop. As we follow BUA through his turbulent youth, navigating the streets and underground worlds of the urban jungle, we recognize the powerful evolution of BUA’s distinct style—“New Urban Realism.” Following in the footsteps of the great masters, BUA represents the lives of both the revered and the marginalized, the heroes and the underdogs of his time—New York City during the 1970s and ’80s. With an autobiographical narrative illustrated with photographs, drawings, sketches, studies, and explanations of how many of his paintings were created, The Beat of Urban Art takes you into the head of the modern-day Toulouse-Lautrec.

To learn more about Justin Bua, click here.

21st Annual Neighborhood to Neighborhood Street Festival, Phildelphia, PA

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The West Philadelphia Coalilition of Neighborhoods & Businesses Presents :

21st Annual Neighborhood to Neighborhood Street Festival
Saturday, September 4, 2010
49th to 52nd & Baltimore Avenues
Philadelphia, PA
11:00am to 8:00pm
Hosted by State Senator Anthony H. Williams
For more information click here.

Twin Hicks Presents Their First Book.. "Noah’s Ark"

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Written by Robert Richardson – Illustrated by Alan & Aaron Hicks

Twin Hicks “Noah’s Ark”, is a unique prospective of the traditional story. It captures the unwavering message of God’s mercy and grace for humanity and Noah’s uncompromising faith.

Although the world had become increasingly wicked, Noah found favor in the sight of God, and God spared him and his family from the great flood. We learn a valuable lesson from Noah and his family, and how they prepared for the signs of the time… They lived in a very corrupt day; however they put their trust and faith into God.

The illustrations in the book are absolutely phenomenal with each page coming to life as the story unfolds. The animals, the ark, the people, and the flood are depicted to the smallest detail, with such vibrant and beautiful colors.


To learn more about this phenomenal illustration book. click here.

"Daniel’s Faith In God" by Alan & Aaron Hicks

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Alan and Aaron Hicks are identical twin brothers from Chicago, Illinois. Not only do they share the same facial features, but the same unique talent as well.

Since the age of eight, the twins shared an intense desire to express their creativity through drawing. Over time, what began as a journey of self-expression through art became a bona fide passion to capture “life” with whatever media God placed in their hands. The only question would be, “which hand?” because Alan paints with his left hand, while Aaron paints with his right.

As the twins matured, the same passion that drove them to create artistically also inspired them to hone their skills within an academic environment. Thus, Alan and Aaron began to further their education and their talent at the University of Illinois in Chicago. In 1985, their perseverance and dedication paid off; the twins received Bachelor of Arts degrees in Biocommunications/Medical Illustrations from the University of Illinois.

Today, they continue to stretch themselves as artists and consistently strive for Godly perfection in their work. Their spiritual and family oriented motifs have been exhibited throughout the country and in numerous publications, such as Ebony, Jet, and Upscale Magazine.

Whether or not Alan and Aaron paint an image together or single handedly produce another stroke of beauty, the results are always the same: they reveal an uncanny ability to achieve outstanding color and detail in every airbrushed image.

To learn more about Alan & Aaron Hicks, click here.