Connecting People with Art since 1985
The newly named Maureen and Roy S. Roberts Gallery honors the generosity of the couple.
They are longtime philanthropists in the areas of the arts, culture and education.
The new gallery features works by such artists as Benny Andrews, Elizabeth Catlett and Alvin Loving.
Throughout their 10-year career in broadcasting, radio personalities and brothers Doug and Ryan Stewart of the nationally syndicated sports talk show, The 2 Live Stews, have stood tall as community activists, serving as mentors for hundreds of youths along with being advocates for higher education.
The cornerstone of their benevolent work is The Stewart Education Foundation, and this past weekend, the brothers hosted a fundraiser at the Bill Lowe Art Gallery on Peachtree Street to raise awareness of their program.
Created in 2010, The Stewart Education Foundation is an independent public charity and sustained by contributions from educators, corporate sponsors and other supporters of public education.
The Stewart Education Foundation offers grants and programs that support educators’ efforts to close the achievement gaps, increase classroom innovations, provide professional development, and salute excellence in education for young African American men.
“The Bill Lowe Art Gallery is incredible. A lot of people came out and it’s for a purpose. We’re trying to increase efforts when it comes to helping with mentoring and sending kids to school,” said Ryan. “The foundation has been blessed and this is a wonderful event.”
Ryan’s older brother and co-host, Doug, followed up these sentiments about event and their charitable organization.
“It’s always good to give back helping young black males get into college and assist with their tuition,” he said. “My brother and I have been mentoring for about eight years with Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta,” he said. “Our show is based on brothers. We’re brothers in our fraternity (Omega Psi Phi) and brothers in real life. So we always figured it would be good to have a brotherly role model in your life and it spun off to our foundation.”
During the festivities, The Stewart Education Foundation presented a $2,000 check to the Commitment to Excellence Foundation’s Black Rhinos mentoring program.
“This money is going to help with our college tours. We’re looking to expand our program to expose young men to college opportunities. This is going to helping that dream come true,” said Kenny Howard, staff member with the Black Rhinos. “This means a lot to us to partner up with the Stewart Foundation and be a recipient of this award so we can expand a do a lot more for the kids.”
Doug and Ryan Stewart’s daily sports talk show, The 2 Live Stews, is syndicated in 37 markets and airs locally on sports radio 790 The Zone from 1-4 p.m. This fall, they will celebrate their 10th anniversary working as on-air personalities.
‘At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing’
edited by George Kimball and John Schulian
Library of America, 517 pp., $35
Blame it on Hemingway.
George Kimball, in the introduction to this collection of essays and excerpts, argues “the birth” of American boxing writing was the fight between Jack Johnson, the first African American to hold the heavyweight title, and Jim Jeffries, a former champion who came out of retirement in 1910 to reclaim the title “for the white race.” Jeffries lost. Jack London covered the event.
London’s piece, written for the New York Herald, opens this book. He writes well about the fight and the bigger implications, but Jack London is not the reason so many writers embrace boxing. Ernest Hemingway moved boxing from the sports pages to the literary pages. Robert Cohn, from “The Sun Also Rises,” was a Princeton middleweight champion, and Hemingway liked to challenge fellow writers to boxing matches, especially when he was drinking. Unfortunately, Hemingway apparently didn’t pen anything sufficiently focused on boxing to make it into this collection.
Literary heavyweight Norman Mailer is among many authors who see the boxing ring not only as a stage for visceral drama, but as an arena rich with symbolism and metaphor. Mailer, in his 1975 book “The Fight,” likens George Foreman’s beating at the hands of Muhammad Ali to a bad marriage.
“There is a threshold to the knockout. When it comes close but is not crossed, then a man can stagger around the ring forever. He has received his terrible message and is still standing. No more of the same woe can destroy him. He is like the victim in a dreadful marriage which no one knows how to end.”
George Plimpton, professional author and amateur athlete, writes about Ali — Cassius Clay at the time of Plimpton’s 1964 piece for Harper’s — as an entertainer more than a fighter, and Plimpton works Malcolm X into this analysis as well.
“Neither of them ever stumbles over words, or ideas, or appears balked by a question, so that one rarely has a sense of the brain actually working but rather that it is engaged in rote.”
Richard Wright, two years before “Native Son” established him as a heavyweight novelist in 1940, wrote about the Joe Louis rematch with German Max Schmeling, a friend of Hitler. The fight itself received one paragraph of attention from Wright, while the remainder of his article for a Marxist publication puts the contest and resulting celebration of Louis’ victory into a context of race, politics and class.
“Carry the dream on for yourself; lift it out of the trifling guise of a prizefight celebration and supply the social and economic details and you have the secret dynamics of proletarian aspiration … They wanted to feel that their expanding feelings were not limited; that the earth was as much theirs as much as anybody else’s.”
Joyce Carol Oates, one of only two women included in the book, focuses on Mike Tyson and his rape conviction in a 1992 essay. Oates believes boxing “raises to an art the passions underlying direct human aggression,” while Tyson puts it thusly, “Outside of boxing, everything is so boring.”
Personally, I think boxing can be boring, but good writing interests me, and this book is 51 rounds of punchy, disciplined, agile writing. Hemingway is not included, probably because he made statements such as, “My writing is nothing, my boxing is everything,” but didn’t write about boxing all that much. I believe he would appreciate the writers here who elevate the sport.
For 25 years Yusef Harris has promoted black awareness at Alkebu-Lan Images Bookstore, an independent bookstore that focuses on black history, education, self-help and spirituality.
“I wanted products that reflect African-American heritage and culture and improve one’s self-esteem,” said Harris, who opened the Jefferson Street shop in 1986. “At the time, there were no resources for black art and black books.
“People would come in and say, ‘I want that Cosby art,’ because there was an awakening and awareness in the black community.”
Alkebu-Lan was the original name for the continent of Africa whose people were known as Alkebulans, Harris said. The store was the former psychologist’s solution to promote positive images of blacks in the community, he said.
Now, celebrating its 25th anniversay, the store offers books on black history, self-help, urban novels, spirituality and children’s books with brown-shaded cartoon characters.
Harris added greeting cards from a black-owned company before Hallmark’s Mahogany line was created.
His business grew with the popularity of The Cosby Show and Terry McMillan’s 1992 novel, Waiting to Exhale.
“Alkebu-Lan works because I am selling niche products that could not be found in other stores. It is my business to know what book Tom Joyner is talking about on his radio show or what books are props in black films for when people come in and say, ‘Do you know that book? I can’t remember the title but I heard (about) it on the radio.’”
Harris travels to conferences for professional black organizations to promote his Nashville-based bookstore. His ventures have helped Alkebu-Lan Images become a destination for African-American tourists in Nashville and for people on college tours.
“That national base has become a big part of my success,” he said. About 10 percent of the business comes from colleges and education centers. Another 30 percent comes from conventions and festivals.
Harris opened the bookstore using a $15,000 loan from the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency as the down payment on a former gas station. His first inventory was full of trinkets and straw bags that he brought back from Kenya. There were also a few books donated by other black-owned bookstores and entrepreneurs.
The company grew to have a $100,000 payroll in the mid-1990s with a satellite location at Tennessee State University’s incubation center for shipping books and paintings.
In recent years, the book business has dwindled, but Alkebu-Lan Images says it holds on by reminding North Nashville residents of the importance of raising literate youth.
The bookstore began celebrating its 25th anniversary with a weekend book fair at Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet School with 25 local authors. Harris awarded $500 in scholarships to three students at the event.
As other national booksellers and regional bookstores close their doors, Alkebu-Lan also has seen a decline in customers, but Harris says he is committed to promoting African heritage and culture.
He has launched the “Power Now, Reading is How” initiative to put Saturday morning reading programs in North Nashville churches. Harris is donating books and recruiting retired teachers to help elementary and middle school students cultivate their reading skills and adopt the habit of opening a book. He also plans to create a formal organization for Nashville’s black authors.
An archeological dig got underway on Tuesday on what is believed to have been the site of the home of the great 19th century African American jockey Isaac Murphy. Confirmation, perhaps by unearthing the foundation, would signal a key first step toward the construction of the Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden, envisioned as an homage to the three-time Kentucky Derby winning jockey -a first- and recognition that before there was a Keeneland, Lexington’s Northside was the heart of Thoroughbred horse racing in the Bluegrass.
“It’s a bookend to the park dedicated to the horse (Thoroughbred Park at the corner of Midland and Main),” said Steve Austin of the Blue Grass Community Foundation. “Now we’re talking about a park dedicated to some of the people who rode the horses. We don’t do enough of that in Lexington. The horse is king, but it takes a human to ride it.”
Many of those humans resided in Lexington’s predominately African-American East End neighborhood. They included the winning jockey of the first Kentucky Derby in 1875, Oliver Lewis, as well as Ansel Williamson, who trained Lewis’ steed, Aristides. Thomas Street was once home to jockey James “Soup” Perkins, who rode Halma to victory in the 1895 Derby.
But considered to this day one of the greatest riders who ever lived, Isaac Murphy was a cut above them all, not only the first jockey to win three Derbys, but adding to his first victory in the 1884 “Run for the Roses” the winner’s trophies in the Kentucky Oaks and the Clark Handicap.
The park design, said Austin, is expected to become a point of real pride not only for residents of the East End, but for the entire city.
“This will be one of the finest additions to the city park system in a long time,” Austin said. “We’ll have plazas. We’ll have dry-laid stone walls. We’ll have art elements. We’ll have an outdoor amphitheater for classes and performances. We’ll have storyboards that will talk about Isaac’s life and other African Americans in the (horse) industry and the history of the East End. So, it’s a place of beauty, a place of learning. It will also be the trailhead of the Legacy Trail. You can start right there and go all the way to the Horse Park.”
Austin’s organization is spearheading efforts to raise funds in support of the project and has received a generous lift from local businessman Warren Rogers.
“W. Rogers Company (the Lexington-based water treatment facilities management firm) has made a $25,000 donation toward construction of the park that matched a $25,000 contribution by the BGCF. We’d like to use that as a challenge to the rest of the business community. We’re 80 percent of the way there. We need another $100,000,” he noted.
Austin said construction of the park will get underway as soon as the required archeology is completed and plans are approved by the state.
“We’re going to go ahead and start construction on the belief that the community will support us,” he said.
What inspires Austin’s faith? Positioning and collaboration.
“Isaac Murphy is an inspirational figure because of the integrity with which he lived his life,” noted Rogers when asked what motivated him to contribute so generously to the project. “He can be a role model for East End kids and children throughout Lexington. His memory also helps connect East End residents to their historic past as the center of Lexington’s Thoroughbred racing industry. This is why I am excited about being invested and an active participant in the rebirth of the Third Street corridor.”
A celebration of Isaac’s 150th year is scheduled for Saturday, May 14, 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., on the location at the corner of Third Street and Midland Avenue. The event features an official proclamation by Mayor Jim Gray, a public archeological dig, live music, kid crafts, stick horse races and cupcakes.
Schoolchildren will participate in the dig on May 18 and 19.
Artists included in the exhibition are:
Karen Barnes-Lucas
Kellie Briscoe
Jonathan Bryan
Sidney Marcel Conley
Amiynah Hanna
Johari Huggins
Jonquinn Orr
Charonda Taylor
The opening reception on Sunday, May 15, from 2 to 5 pm is FREE and open to the public. Don’t miss your chance to meet these future masters and add their art to your collection!
Curated by world renowned artist Synthia SAINT JAMES, the Spectrum exhibit showcases the work of eight emerging artists SAINT JAMES met on speaking tours at colleges, universities, organizations and exhibitions across the nation in 2010-2011.
IMAGE: Jonathan Bryer, 2011
The Bird Keeper
Acrylic on Canvas
At the annual Art Collectors’ Council meeting, held this year on April 30, works by African-American artist Sargent Johnson and Ernest Lawson were highlights.
Following this year’s meeting of The Huntington‘s Art Collectors’ Council, two significant works by important 20th-century artists have been added to the institution’s art collection—a remarkable pipe-organ screen carved by Sargent Johnson in 1937 and an early oil painting by Ernest Lawson titled Harlem Flats (Back Lot Laundry), made in 1907.
Both are on view in the Rothenberg Loggia of the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries for the next two weeks, after which the pipe-organ screen will be removed for conservation treatment and Harlem Flats will be incorporated into the permanent galleries.
“This is the first time we’ve had the Art Collectors’ Council pieces on display,” said Jessica Todd Smith, Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator of American Art, who also expressed her delight at having these fine works become a part of The Huntington’s holdings.
The pipe-organ screen is impressive for many reasons, not least its sheer size. The 22-foot-long, three-panel screen is made from beautiful California redwood and features charming iconography of woodland creatures, trees and musicians.
The piece was created for the organ at the California School for the Blind in Berkeley, CA, under the Federal Arts Project, the visual arts division of the Depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA). Since such works are typically owned by the federal government and may form an integral part of a building structure (for example, a wall mural), the chance to purchase Johnson’s screen presented an extraordinary opportunity for The Huntington to own, as Smith called it, “a monumental WPA sculpture.”
Aside from its aesthetic beauty, the screen is significant for being the first major work by an African-American artist to be acquired by The Huntington. And though it will need treatment before it is finally ready for permanent viewing (including replacing the non-original plywood backing), it is still in good shape, given its age and its removal from a building. “All kinds of bad things can happen,” said Smith. “The fact that it hasn’t been messed with too much is fabulous.”
Regarding the other acquisition, Harlem Flats, Smith said, “Lawson has been on our wish list for a long time.”
Lawson was a member of The Eight, a stylistically diverse group of artists that included George Luks, Arthur B. Davies, William Gackens, Maurice Prendergast and John Sloan (each represented in The Huntington’s collections). With Harlem Flats, The Huntington now owns works by seven of The Eight.
Smith said, “For me, it’s a great piece to represent Lawson because it shows his roots in the Ashcan school”—a realist art movement that focused on New York urban scenes. Yet, as Smith pointed out, this work–which depicts the back of a tenement building but still places emphasis on light and paint application–also demonstrates how Lawson kept one foot in the Impressionist camp.
“I really think it’s one of the best examples of his work I’ve seen,” said Smith.
Nestled in the hills of Pacific Palisades is a hidden treasure of social realist, Hispanic and African American art.
Operating out of the Pacific Palisades home of its owner Charlotte Sherman, the Heritage Gallery contains a unique variety of artwork depicting the social realism movement in America.
“Our focus is on the art of the 1930s through the 1960s with an emphasis on American social realism and Hispanic and African American artists,” said Sherman, 86. “We were active in the civil rights movement so you’ll see a lot of African American art here.”
Originally opening in 1961 on La Cienega Boulevard, Heritage Gallery is the oldest functioning gallery in Los Angeles to her knowledge, Sherman said. She started the gallery with another art lover and social activist, Benjamin Horowitz.
“Since I was an art history major, I came in with a historical background of art and I partnered with Benjamin to start this gallery,” Sherman said. “We were both interested in the social elements like civil rights and women’s rights.”
Horowitz left the gallery in 2000 and that’s when Sherman moved it to the Pacific Palisades home she has shared with her husband since 1963. She said she misses her longtime partner but enjoys working from home where she can take care of her husband, Lorry, who is retired, and appreciates the beautiful ocean view while surrounded by fascinating pieces of art. Sherman even starts off each morning with a hike through the hills by her home.
“It’s so great to be working here,” she said. “We love it here. We cherish it.”
Sherman has spent the last 50 years helping artists, including minorities, get the recognition they deserve. She started out as a painter herself and quickly discovered the prejudices that extended even into the artistic community.
“As a woman artist in the 1940s and 1950s, I never signed my name to my work—only my initials—because women weren’t really accepted into the mainstream art movement,” Sherman said. “That’s why I opened the gallery. I wanted to help other artists like myself who were not being accepted in the artistic community.”
Over the years, Sherman has curated more than 30 shows, mostly for African American and Hispanic artists. It hasn’t always been easy finding museums to host shows for these artists, she said.
“I represented the estate of Mexican artist Jose Clemente Orozco, and 20 years ago museums just weren’t interested,” Sherman said. “I told one curator that in a few years, half the population of California would be Hispanic but he just walked away. He wanted nothing to do with it.”
Fortunately, today there is a lot of interest in Mexican art including many people who collect it, Sherman said. One of the main purposes of the gallery is to educate the public about social injustices.
“I use all of these shows to get these wonderful works of art out to the public,” Sherman said. “I want people to learn about the humanity of mankind and the need to recognize each race of people.”
Sherman currently has three exhibits touring the country: The Arthur Primas Collection, The Art of James C. McMillan and African American Atelier. Sherman spends most of her time arranging exhibits for the artists and collectors she works with but the Heritage Gallery is open to the public by appointment.
The Detroit Institute of Arts will name its new gallery of contemporary African American art after a pioneering General Motors executive and his wife.
The newly named Maureen and Roy S. Roberts Gallery honors the generosity of the couple.
They are longtime philanthropists in the areas of the arts, culture and education.
The new gallery features works by such artists as Benny Andrews, Elizabeth Catlett and Alvin Loving.
Art, music, fellowship, network and relax.
Brunch Served NOW ONLY $8
Hours Noon – 6pm
You won’t believe it’s veggie
For more info call October Gallery 267 297-0188
Host Your Next Event At October Gallery
A month long series of musical performances, art workshops, inspirational and motivational speakers, authors and dance performances all free to the community
Acadiana Outreach is planning a month long cultural celebration in June to celebrate Black Music Month where a series of musical performances, art workshops, motivational speakers, authors, and dance performances in our iconic mosaic building all free to the community.
The goal of this event is to inspire at-risk children and families that may not have the means to recognize or foster a talent and we feel if the financial barrier is removed that some of these kids can use their gift to enrich their lives.
June 25: Zumba for kids * Children’s author Theresa Singleton * And more!
The Birmingham Museum of Art says it will use a $300,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to hire curators for its growing collection of African-American art.
Museum director Gail Andrews says the grant is one of the largest in the museum’s history.
The four-year Mellon grant covers two 2-year fellowships for new curators who will work in the Modern and Contemporary collection and the American Art collection. The museum has three curators who focus on American, Modern and Contemporary art.
Two years ago, the museum dedicated a gallery to African-American art, and the Mellon fellows will work with the curators to develop new exhibits for the space.
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