Michelle Williams Joining Tour Of ‘Fela!’

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NEW YORK — Former Destiny’s Child member Michelle Williams is joining the latest national tour of the musical “Fela!”

Producers said Thursday the singer, who starred on the UPN sitcom “Half & Half,” will be onstage when the tour opens at Sidney Harman Hall in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 29.

“Fela!” – a biography of Nigerian musician and political activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti – will then play 16 cities, including Miami, Atlanta, Cleveland, Dallas, Los Angeles, Seattle and Nashville, Tenn. Williams will play Fela’s African-American lover, Sandra Isadore.

Williams, part of Destiny’s Child along with Kelly Rowland and Beyonce, is now a solo artist who has released the dance album “Unexpected” and the recent singles “On The Run” and “”Waiting On You.” Jay-Z, Beyonce’s husband, is one of the producers of “Fela!” which won three Tony Awards in 2010.

Williams has appeared on Broadway in “Aida,” on tour with “The Color Purple,” and in London starring in “Chicago.”

“Fela!” had its world premiere off-Broadway in the summer of 2008, and opened on Broadway a year later, playing 34 previews and 463 regular performances. It returned to Broadway last summer after an international tour.

Artists to Watch in 2013

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by Modern Painters
Published: December 27, 2012

As in past years, Modern Painters presents a list of emerging artists whose work we — and the artist-nominators we’ve collaborated with — find especially promising. In previous lists, we have showcased as few as nine artists and as many as 100. This time we’ve opted for two dozen, which allows us to describe and reproduce work by each while remaining broad and international in our reach. We remain convinced that other artists are the best spotters of talent, and so again this year we’ve relied on the expert aid of a group of seasoned artists: Rita Ackermann, Dike Blair, Sarah Cain, Anne Collier, N. Dash, Thomas Demand, Natalie Frank, Coco Fusco, Samara Golden, Susan Hefuna, Adam Helms, Glenn Kaino, Ali Kazma, Sam Moyer, Lisa Oppenheim, Erik Parker, Tal R, Kirstine Roepstorff, Tino Sehgal, Katrin Sigurdardottir, Fiona Tan, Nari Ward, Jonas Wood, Erwin Wurm. Erik Wysocan.

Benjamin Hirte

Born 1980, Aschaffenburg, Germany. Lives in Vienna.

A sculptor, Hirte thinks in a complex way about presentation and the ideas behind exhibitions, both for his art — which draws on the history and audience of the spaces in which he shows his work — and in his curatorial practice. Even though the artworks themselves seem like formalist sculptures and found objects, he sees them as a collage bringing together diverse elements from sculpture and the world of objects.

Lisa Oppenheim — who exhibited a work in a recent show Hirte curated at Drei Gallery, in Cologne — says, “What is remarkable about Hirte’s work is the way in which collage functions as a structuring logic rather than simply a way of describing formal aspects of individual pieces. A central theme in his practice seems to be the way in which ideas are in themselves collages, sourced from different media and historical and physical spaces.” And indeed, the uniting methodology in Hirte’s work draws on ideas that belong to linguistics: wordplay, syntax, and semantics. “But with an undertone of parody,” the artist adds.

Margaret Lee

Born 1980, Yonkers, New York. Lives in Brooklyn.

“All of my work is human-scale, scaled to real life, and appropriative of the banal and everyday,” says Lee of her photographs and sculptures, which often fixate on subjects as unremarkable as the potato. “They’re handmade readymades — which, I know, is a contradiction.” Her show last year at Jack Hanley Gallery, in New York, included a watermelon fabricated from plaster and a faux zebra skin made with painted linen. The artist, who runs the New York gallery 47 Canal and is the founder of 179 Canal Gallery, currently has work in “New Pictures of Common Objects,” curated by Christopher Lew and on view at MoMA PS1 through December 31. “While Margaret’s work is rooted in handmade sculpture, it speaks to concerns of life in the 21st century,” explains Lew, “especially how the intangible online world is never that far from the physical.”

Edgardo Aragon

Born 1985, Oaxaca, Mexico. Lives in Oaxaca and Mexico City.

“My work speaks about how power in high places is used to corner a large segment of society,” says Aragon, whose videos deal with conflict in his home country. “I am currently making a video whose origin lies in the social protest against mining on the continent. The result of my investigation is an action executed by a male choir that sings in front of a mine that was abandoned during the colonial period in Oaxaca. The musical composition is made from the street protest slogans, with stylistic hints of Baroque. Another project consists in metaphorically re-creating a ‘death flight,’ which was something that the government used to disappear tortured bodies of peasants.” The tossing of people from planes into the ocean was a tactic, he tells us, that originated in the South Pacific during the 1970s. “This despicable practice was subsequently adopted by the South American dictatorships to eliminate their rivals,” Aragon says. “And for another recent project, I made a video about the tiny borders that are generated in a small town in southern Mexico, where the residents have violent disputes over how their territory is marked. 13 musicians play separate funeral marches while standing on stone mounds, whose function is to draw the territorial lines.”

Ajay Kurian

Born 1984, Baltimore. Lives in Brooklyn.

Lately, Kurian has pursued projects “concerned with reaching beyond the human,” as he puts it. One, to be exhibited this fall in India, consists of clarified butter, or ghee, silkscreened directly onto linen. The butter is then dusted with gold, as for fingerprints. The silkscreened images are either taken from the patterns inside security envelopes or are fabrications incorporating quasi-crystalline formations. Both, Kurian says, “are meant to withhold information from others. I found that I was more interested in the mechanism that hid the information than in the information itself. Thus the image becomes a screen, revealing and hiding simultaneously. This work addresses the sense of hiding or withdrawal as a general motif, almost as an aesthetic law: Nothing presents itself as such. Phenomenally, the silkscreened pattern can just barely be seen, and only in a particular light. In the right or wrong position, it disappears into a cloud of golden dust and the scent of musty butter. The series is titled ‘Prevenient,’ meaning anticipatory; it’s a word borrowed from a phrase, ‘prevenient grace,’ coined by the 18th-century theologian John Wesley.”

Katja Mater

Born 1979, Hoorn, the Netherlands. Lives in Amsterdam.

“I record the numerous ways we can look at photography and think about photographic images,” Mater says of her work. Her process is exceptional in that she investigates photography by turning it on itself, disrupting our sense of what this medium is. In her hands, photography loses any relationship to the documentary and instead approaches something closer to painting and drawing, which she takes as the basis of her practice. She interpolates drawing with photograph y— for example, using a camera to record the process of drawing, which is then masked by multiple negatives, generating countless different outcomes from one supposedly unique drawing. Mater is currently producing a book to be published early next year by Roma.

6 Ways the Fiscal Cliff Deal Will Impact the Art World

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by Rachel Corbett
Published: January 2, 2013

Last night, the House of Representatives finally voted to pass a measure ending the “fiscal cliff” battle. A failure to reach accord threatened to impose a sudden tax hike for Americans across the board, but also to gouge funding for nonprofits, so-called “entitlement” programs, and cultural organizations. In the end, Democrats and Republicans both made concessions, and the results promise to affect arts organzations in a variety of ways. Here’s a look at six aspects of the deal that will impact the art world, for better or worse:

1. While middle- and lower-income Americans were granted permanent tax relief, individuals earning above $400,000 and households earning above $450,000 will see a tax increase of close to 5 percent. Of course, that echelon — and the stratosphere beyond — is the domain of most prominent art collectors. So will the dent in their pocketbooks decrease the likelihood that they will patronize the arts? Nina Ozlu Tunceli, chief counsel of government and public affairs for Americans for the Arts, doesn’t think so. “The research shows that the higher the tax rate, the more incentive you have to reduce your tax bill by giving to charity,” she said. “But the best indicator of positive charitable giving is a strong economy. So if this leads to stronger economic growth, then charitable giving will be part of that economic bandwagon.”

2. One of the bigger victories for nonprofits is that Obama’s proposal to cap charitable deductions at 28 percent for higher-income households ($200,000+), regardless of their tax bracket, never came to fruition. That means that charities needn’t have as much fear that donors will stop giving to a cause because the tax benefit is not there.

3. In exchange for forgoing that cap on charitable tax incentives, however, the President reinstated what’s known as the Pease Amendment, a law named for the late congressman that was in effect throughout the 1990s. Under the new law, high-income taxpayers — defined as a single person making $250,000 or a married couple earning $300,000 — can deduct a smaller percentage of charitable donations, a figure that’s calculated in proportion to their income. “Obama’s not out to get charities, he’s out to raise revenue,” said Ozlu Tunceli. “But the key here is that reimposing the Pease limitation on itemized deductions will likely have a negative impact on incentives for charitable giving.”

4. Most of the public was probably not aware that one of the more surprising backroom proposals would have involved instituting a kind of nonprofit hierarchy: groups that address more urgent causes, like hunger and homelessness, would have received better funding, perhaps tax credits rather than deductions, while others, like arts programs, would have gotten less. (Some legislators wanted the plan to go even further and revoke the 501c3 status of educational groups altogether.) This never went through — but the fact that it was on the table might send chills down the spines of art supporters.

5. Another win for nonprofits: the extension of the IRA Charitable Rollover. Basically, when a person who owns an IRA account hits a certain age, they’re required to withdraw money, which in turn gets taxed. But since account holders don’t always actually need the money — they’re withdrawing it only out of obligation — they sometimes donate it to charity. Because of the extension of the law, that money doesn’t then get taxed. As part of the new deal, charitable groups will continune to receive the full amount of such donations rather than the taxed amount.

6. If the government went over the fiscal cliff, most areas of federal expenditure (including the military) would have been hit with an automatic 8-percent budget cut. That’s not going to happen, for now — but many organizations are not in the clear. Those automatic cuts, known as sequestration, have only been postponed for two months. After that, lawmakers will again debate which areas should continue to receive funding. For the arts, Ozlu Tunceli predicts that popular institutions like the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian will probably continue to receive support from the government. But more controversial groups, like the National Endowment for the Arts, which has already had its funding slashed repeatedly in recent years, may not fare as well.

All of which is to say that this debate is far from over.

Tarantino Unchained

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In early 2010, not long after the release of Quentin Tarantino’s Second World War revenge epic, “Inglourious Basterds,” I began teaching a course on American history at Moscow State University. When a Russian friend asked me what I thought of the film I told him I loved the way the director created an alternate history in order to make a larger point about the universal nature of heroism. My friend and, as I later learned, lots of other Russians took issue with the film for precisely that reason. “Is this,” he asked, “how Americans really perceive World War II?” In Russia, where the annual May 9th celebrations of the German surrender dwarf those of the Fourth of July in this country, the sacrifices that were crucial to defeating Hitler are a point of huge national pride. The history department at the university features a marble monument to hundreds of university students who died defending the country. Because many Russians feel that the world—and particularly the United States—has never properly recognized the scale of their losses, they tend to see “Inglourious Basterds” not as a revenge fantasy but as an attempt to further whitewash their role in Hitler’s demise. The alternate history in “Inglourious Basterds” failed there because the actual history had yet to be reconciled. The movie’s lines between fantasy and the actual myopic perspectives on history were so hazy that the audience wasn’t asked to suspend disbelief, they were asked to suspend conscience. With “Django Unchained,” Tarantino’s tale of vengeful ex-slave, what happened in Russia is happening here.

The theme of revenge permeates Tarantino’s work. If the violence in his films seems gratuitous, it’s also deployed as a kind of spiritual redemption. And if this dynamic is applicable anywhere in American history, it’s on a slave plantation. Frederick Douglass, in his slave narrative, traced his freedom not to the moment when he escaped to the north but the moment in which he first struck an overseer who attempted to whip him. Quentin Tarantino is the only filmmaker who could pack theatres with multiracial audiences eager to see a black hero murder a dizzying array of white slaveholders and overseers. (And, in all fairness, it’s not likely that a black director would’ve gotten a budget to even attempt such a thing.)

The most recent Hollywood attempt to grapple with slavery was Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” a biopic that presents the final four months of the President’s life and his attempts to shepherd the Thirteenth Amendment through Congress. Lincoln as he appears in the film is a man fully formed and possessed of a vast wellspring of indignation about slavery. But he also appears as the moral vector of his age in ways that don’t square with history. In focussing so directly on Lincoln’s efforts, Spielberg’s film slights abolitionists, radical Republicans, and, crucially, the African-Americans—slave and free—who pushed Lincoln to the positions he eventually adopted.

From its opening scene, “Django” inverts this scenario. Here is the spaghetti Western about an ex-slave turned bounty hunter who takes the bloody business of emancipation into his own hands. This is not Tarantino’s best film but it is probably his most clever. He plays fast and loose with history here, but there are risks implicit in doing this with a film about slavery that aren’t nearly as significant in toying with the history of the West. The history of the West is settled in ways that are not the case for the history of the American South and slavery. The film’s premise alone was enough to spark controversy. Spike Lee—a longtime critic of Tarantino—took the unwieldy position that he refused to see the film but knew that it would be disrespectful to his ancestors.

There are moments where this convex history works brilliantly, like when Tarantino depicts the K.K.K. a decade prior to its actual formation in order to thoroughly ridicule its members’ (literally) veiled racism. But, as my Russian friend pointed out about “Inglourious Basterds,” “Django Unchained” makes it apparent that not even an entertaining alternate history can erase our actual conceptions of the past.

In “Django,” the director creates an audacious black hero who shoots white slavers with impunity and lives to tell about it. In the Harlem theatre where I saw the film, the largely black audience cheered each time an overseer met his end. There is a noble undertaking at the heart of all this gunplay. Django, played brilliantly by Jamie Foxx, and King Schultz, his white bounty-hunter mentor—played by an equally adroit Christoph Waltz—are on a mission to rescue Hildy (Kerry Washington), the enslaved woman Django loves. The trade-off for an audience indulging in that emotionally powerful and rarely depicted brand of black heroism is overlooking aspects of the film that were at least as troubling as the other parts were affirming.

Primary among these concerns is the frequency of with which Tarantino deploys the n-word. If ever there were an instance in which the term was historically fitting it would seem that a Western set against the backdrop of slavery—a Southern—would be it. Yet the term appears with such numb frequency that “Django” manages to raise the epithet to the level of a pronoun. (I wonder whether the word “nigger” is spoken in the film more frequently than the word “he” or “she.”) Had the word appeared any more often it would have required billing as a co-star. At some point, it becomes difficult not to wonder how much of this is about the film and how much is about the filmmaker. Given the prominence of the word in “Pulp Fiction” and “Jackie Brown”—neither of which remotely touch on slavery—its usage in “Django” starts to seem like racial ventriloquism, a kind of camouflage that allows Tarantino to use the word without recrimination.

This is just the first path in the labyrinth of racial concerns that “Django” constructs. Here, as in “Lincoln,” black people—with the exception of the protagonist and his love interest—are ciphers passively awaiting freedom. Django’s behavior is so unrepentantly badass as to make him an enigma to both whites and blacks who encounter him. For his part, Django never deigns to offer a civil word to any other slave, save his love interest. In a climactic scene, Django informs his happily enslaved nemesis that he is the one n-word in ten thousand audacious enough to kill anyone standing in the way of freedom.

Is this how Americans actually perceive slavery? More often than not, the answer to that question is answered in the affirmative. It is precisely because of the extant mythology of black subservience that these scenes pack such a cathartic payload. The film’s defenders are quick to point out that “Django” is not about history. But that’s almost like arguing that fiction is not reality—it isn’t, but the entire appeal of the former is its capacity to shed light on how we understand the latter. In my sixteen years of teaching African-American history, one sadly common theme has been the number of black students who shy away from courses dealing with slavery out of shame that slaves never fought back.

It seems almost pedantic to point out that slavery was nothing like this. The slaveholding class existed in a state of constant paranoia about slave rebellions, escapes, and a litany of more subtle attempts to undermine the institution. Nearly two hundred thousand black men, most of them former slaves, enlisted in the Union Army in order to accomplish en masse precisely what Django attempts to do alone: risk death in order to free those whom they loved. Tarantino’s attempt to craft a hero who stands apart from the other men—black and white—of his time is not a riff on history, it’s a riff on the mythology we’ve mistaken for history. Were the film aware of that distinction, “Django” would be far less troubling—but it would also be far less resonant. The alternate history is found not in the story of vengeful ex-slave but in the idea that he could be the only one.

Django’s true nemesis is not the slaveholder who subjects Hildy to cruel punishments but Stephen, the house slave devoutly allied with the slaveholder. The central conflict is not between an ex-slave and a slaver but between two archetypes—the militant and the sellout. But in creating Stephen, Tarantino necessarily trafficked in the stereotypes he was ostensibly responding to. Samuel L. Jackson plays Stephen’s overblown insouciance and anachronistic mf-bombs to great comedic effect. There are moments, however, when ironies cancel each other out, and we’re left with a stark truth—at its most basic, this is an instance in which a white director holds an obsequious black slave up for ridicule. The use of this character as a comic foil seems essentially disrespectful to the history of slavery. Oppression, almost by definition, is a set of circumstances that bring out the worst in most people. A response to slavery—even a cowardly, dishonorable one like what we witness with Stephen—highlights the depravity of the institution. We’ve come a long way racially, but not so far that laughing at that character shouldn’t be deeply disturbing.

On the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, it’s worth recalling that slavery was made unsustainable largely through the efforts of those who were enslaved. The record is replete with enslaved blacks—even so-called house slaves—who poisoned slaveholders, destroyed crops, “accidentally” burned down buildings, and ran away in such large numbers their lost labor crippled the Confederate economy. The primary sin of “Django Unchained” is not the desire to create an alternative history. It’s in the idea that an enslaved black man willing to kill in order to protect those he loves could constitute one.

Photograph: Andrew Cooper, SMPSP/The Weinstein Company.

George Lucas, Mellody Hobson Engaged: ‘Star Wars’ Director, Businesswoman Set To Marry

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The Huffington Post  |  By
Posted: 01/03/2013 3:18 pm EST  |  Updated: 01/03/2013 3:49 pm EST

HuffPost Celebrity can report that filmmaker George Lucas and his girlfriend of seven years, businesswoman Mellody Hobson, are engaged.

The famed director, 68, and his longtime partner and president of a big-time Chicago-based investment management firm, Ariel Investments LLC, 43, are no strangers to showcasing their relationship in the spotlight. The pair are often spotted hand-in-hand on the red carpet, everywhere from the Cannes Film Festival to Formula One Grand Prix races to the NAACP awards.

This will be the second marriage for the “Star Wars” writer-director — he was previously married to Marcia Lucas (1969–1983) — and the first marriage for Hobson, who helms the $3 billion investment firm and is a regular financial contributor to “Good Morning America.”

Lucas recently made headlines after donating $4 billion to an education foundation — the amount he received after selling Lucasfilm Ltd. (which Lucas solely owned) to Disney.

“For 41 years, the majority of my time and money has been put into the company,” Lucas said of his donation. “As I start a new chapter in my life, it is gratifying that I have the opportunity to devote more time and resources to philanthropy.”

Now that’s quite the power couple. Congratulations!

Fantasia Slammed For Anti-Gay Instagram Rant

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Fantasia caused a bit of controversy for some anti-gay comments she made on Instagram Sunday night. The singer, apparently responding to some criticism aimed at her, posted a picture of herself standing on a table saying:

I Rise ABOVE IT ALL!!! THE WORLD IS GONE MAD. KIDS, THE GOVERMENT, THE church House…Everybody Trying!!!!!!! Its a lot that going on that the Bible speaks about we should not be doing. Weed legal in some places, Gay Marriage Legal BUT YET IM JUDGED!!! Im not doing Nothing for you…My Life!!!!

Fanny’s followers wasted no time going in with the insults which ranged from her education level to her relationship with baby daddy Antwaun Cook.

Fanny defended herself by stating:

It has been brought to my attention that something I said was taken out of context. I Fantasia Monique Barrino don’t judge anyone because I don’t want to be judged. The gay community is one of my largest supporters. I support the gay community as well as they support me. Bloggers please stop misrepresenting the facts.

The post was later deleted and her reps went into spin mode and released the following statement:

Comments made by Ms. Barrino through her Instagram account were recently taken far out of context, and the purpose of this release is to set the record straight. Ms. Barrino is not now, nor has she ever been an opponent of the LGBT community. She has supported and performed at numerous events that are sponsored by the LGBT community. Whether it’s through a live performance or placement on social media, Ms. Barrino uses every opportunity to reach out and connect with her fans, all of her fans.

Sometimes it’s best to just keep your fingers off those keys!

read more….

Asian Teens Wearing Fake Braces As Status Symbol: Report

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The Huffington Post  |  By
Posted: 01/02/2013 12:35 pm EST  |  Updated: 01/02/2013 1:14 pm EST

Defying Western stigma and school-age angst over wearing braces, some Asian teens are reportedly buying fake braces as a status symbol.

This orthodontia oddity has flourished in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, according to outlets.

Kids are forking over $100 for the black-market fashion braces to fool observers into thinking they can afford the authentic — and expensive — mouthworks, AFP reports.

Mickey Mouse and Hello Kitty are among the popular designs, but whimsical themes aside, the braces can also be dangerous. As Vice.com notes, the faux braces have led to the deaths of two teens in Thailand, causing the government to crack down on vendors. Selling fashion braces now carries a punishment of up to six months in prison and a $1,300 fine, according to the report.

In 2009 — yes, this trend has some bite — CBS reported on the Thai government’s concern that parts could come loose and choke wearers, and that some of the braces contained lead.

A few outlets poked fun at the newly updated fad. MSN cracked that perhaps stick-on acne would be next. Jezebel wrote, “I’m sure brace-decoration-technology (?) has only improved since I was young, making them ripe for customization and bedazzling and conspicuous consumption.”

Humor site the Chive ran a pictorial, remarking that among all the supposedly crazy crazes, this one was, well, surprising.

Ty Pennington To Host New HLN Series

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NEW YORK — Ty Pennington is doing some traveling again, this time for the HLN television network.

HLN said Wednesday that Pennington, who stars in “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” will host a monthly series called “American Journey.” It will focus on people with unusual lifestyles, and debuts Saturday, Jan. 12. Each episode will air multiple times over the weekend on the network formerly known as CNN Headline News, with a new edition starting each month.

Early episodes will focus on lobstermen and Delta blues musicians.

Pennington said he wants to follow the growing subculture of entrepreneurs and creative thinkers trying to rebuild the country.

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Health Trends 2013: What To Expect

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No one can know exactly what the year ahead will bring. But those who work in and monitor the fitness industry can make some pretty good guesses.

If 2012 could be defined by juice cleanses, boutique spinning classes and CrossFit, the year ahead will take these trends to the next level, with Starbucks and other major chains getting into the juice game, boutique fitness studios for every discipline and the heavy lifting principles of CrossFit moving from the box to the mainstream gym.

What’s more? Gluten-free fast food, self-monitoring fitness apps and more themed races than you’ll be able to sign up for.

read more…..

Bobby Womack Alzheimer’s: Soul Singer Reveals Battle With Degenerative Brain Disease

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01/02/13 12:15 PM ET EST AP

NEW YORK — Bobby Womack has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member told the BBC in a recent interview the diagnosis comes after he began having difficulty remembering his songs and the names of people he’s worked with.

A spokeswoman did not immediately reply to a message left by the Associated Press.

The soul singer has cut a wide path through the music business as a performer and songwriter in his 50-year career and recently launched another act with “The Bravest Man in the Universe,” the Damon Albarn-produced comeback album that recently made several best-of lists.

Alzheimer’s is a degenerative brain disease characterized by memory loss. It’s the latest health problem for the 68-year-old singer, who’s also been fighting cancer and other maladies.

___

Online:

http://bobbywomack.com

Councilwoman Cindy Bass at October Gallery

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philly record

 

xmasbass
GATHERING TOYS for needy kids at Councilwoman Cindy Bass’s party in Mt. Airy
were, from left, Anuj Gupta, Bass, judicial aspirant Crystal Powell, Esq. and Mercer Redcross.

Andrew Turner Paints (Video) Digital Download

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Price $10
Visual Artist Andrew Turner Paints a composition from beginning to end.
Video Time approx. 30 minutes

Purchase Video and Download

DOWNLOAD NOW

 

Biography of Andrew Turner (1944-2001)

 

Andrew Turner was born in l944 in Chester, Pennsylvania. He was a graduate of Temple University’s Tyler School of Art. His work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad.  He taught art in grades K-12 in the Chester, Pennsylvania Public Schools and in correctional centers. His appointments include Artist-in-Residence and Curator, Deshong Museum, Chester, PA; Lecturer, Widener University; and Lecturer, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.  He also toured and lectured in The People’s Republic of China. Collectors who hold Turner’s paintings include Woody Allen, Dr. Maya Angelou, ARCO Chemical Company, Bell Telephone Company, Dr. Constance Clayton, Will Smith, Danny Glover, Mr. and Mrs. Bill Cosby, Edie Huggins, Eric Lindros, Mr. and Mrs. Louis Madonni, Moses Malone, Penn State University, the artist formerly known as Prince, Mr. and Mrs. Harold Sorgenti, Swarthmore College,  Mrs. Marilyn Wheaton, and Widener University’s Deshong Museum, just to name a few. His Philadelphia commissions include: WDAS FM (1996); Marco Solo, (written by J. Schwinn and G. Harlow, illustrated by Andrew Turner) Reverse Angle Productions, Inc.  (1995); and Robin Hood Dell, Fairmount Park (1985).


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Soledad O’Brien: Who is black in America? I am (Video)

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Editor’s Note: In today’s United States, is being black determined by the color of your skin, by your family, by what society says, or something else? Soledad O’Brien reports “Who Is Black in America?” on CNN at 8 p.m. ET/PT this Sunday, December 9. 

By Yaba Blay and Soledad O’Brien, CNN

(CNN) – Yaba Blay, Ph.D. created the (1)ne Drop Project, a multiplatform endeavor that hopes to challenge perceptions of black identity. Blay, a consulting producer for “Who Is Black in America?” spoke to hundreds of those who may not immediately be recognized as “black” based on how they look, including CNN Anchor Soledad O’Brien.  In this edited excerpt from her forthcoming book, Blay spoke to O’Brien about what makes a person black, and why the conversation is important.

Yaba Blay: How do you identify? Racially and culturally?

Soledad O’Brien: I’m black. I’m Latina. My mom is Cuban. Afro-Cuban. My dad is white and Australian. And I think because of my job, often a question like “How do you identify?” is really not about the question. It’s always “What side are you on?” “What perspective to you bring?”

Blay: I remember when “Black in America” first came out, and a lot of people being like “Who is she and why is SHE doing this?”

O’Brien: I think it’s a valid question. I think every question is valid. I just don’t think there should be a rule like “Oooh that is the question that shall not be asked.” I’m happy to answer any question. And I think also there is sometimes a hostility in that question. Especially around “Black in America.” You know, “Who are you that gets to tell our story?” And I understand that, too.

You know, white people really have a luxury in that they get a range of stories, that they’re not defined by five stories. So I think that the difference with “Black in America” was the filter did matter. That there are only going to be five stories and we want to know exactly who you are and what your credentials are to be telling our story. And I don’t think you can do documentaries and opt out of the conversation. You know, it’s not “Well you know that’s about them, not about me.”

I think what I love about the documentary process is that you bring yourself to the documentary. And hopefully that makes you ask good questions and hopefully that makes you reveal a little bit about yourself as well.

Blay: Have you had that experience of people asking you, “What are you?”

O’Brien: Oh my God yes! All the time. People tweet me that question. I used to take great offense – like immediately sort of get annoyed, partly because I don’t think that came from a very good place. I think I read it as sort of questioning my value and reasons for being wherever I was. But now I think it’s twofold: one, I think that because I’m a journalist, people are really just trying to understand – “You’re somebody I see on TV, but I don’t know you in person so who are you?” Then, two, I think that part of my job as a journalist is to educate people about stories in a way and some of these stories I’m part of that story.

I think I was part of “Black in America” even in the context of who is the filter of the story and so it became relevant, so I really stopped hating answering that question because I felt like my job is to elaborate and explain for people who I am. I think it’s relevant. I think because of the reporting that I do I sort of owe people that answer.

Blay: So why do you think the questions are coming? Why are there questions about why Soledad is doing “Black in America?”

O’Brien: Some of it is physical presentation. I think that some of it was that I’d been anchoring shows that weren’t dealing specifically with African-Americans so it was kind of like “What are your politics? What’s your perspective? Who are you?” I think sometimes it’s as straightforward as that.

At screenings for “Black in America” I’ve heard people say, “Well you know I never thought you were black until you did Katrina and then I thought you were black.” And I’d say, “That’s so fascinating. What was it that made you think I was black?” And then someone else would say, “Yeah, but she’s married to a white man.” And I’m like “OK, so does that make me less black and how in your mind does that math work? That there’s a certain number and if you get below that number because you get points for who you marry and you lose points for where you live and how you speak?”

But even just going back to the questions consistently, I thought it was just illuminating. I thought it was just so fascinating to really open up a conversation about race. Now we’re up to “Black in America 5” and we’re having that conversation.

Blay: So what makes a person black?

O’Brien: I certainly don’t think it’s skin color. And I certainly don’t think it’s how well you speak the language. And I’m not sure I can answer that question thoroughly because my consciousness about race was really implanted in me by my parents. I would say I’m black because my parents said I’m black. I’m black because my mother’s black. I’m black because I grew up in a family of all black people. I knew I was black because I grew up in an all-white neighborhood. And my parents, as part of their protective mechanisms that they were going to give to us made it very clear what we were.

My mother would say, “Do not let anybody tell you you’re not black. Do not let anybody tell you you’re not Latina.” And I remember thinking her comments were so weird, like “What is she talking about?” There weren’t people coming over to my house saying “You’re not black!” We stuck out!

But now I understand what she was going for. And I am very grateful for those conversations because I think it implants in your head sort of the perspective that my parents wanted us to have. We were raised that way in a place that was often not particularly hospitable and sometimes out and out hostile to people of color. I guess my parents taught me very early that how other people perceive me really was not my problem or my responsibility. It was much more based on how I perceived me.

Ann Coulter Says GOP Should Give In To Obama On Taxes: ‘We Lost The Election’

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Ann Coulter shocked Sean Hannity on Wednesday when she conceded that she thinks Republicans should let tax rates for the rich go up.

House Republicans are currently battling President Obama over whether or not to hike taxes on the top 2 percent of earners in the negotiations over the so-called “fiscal cliff.”

After Coulter started to say that Republicans should concede on taxes on the very rich, Hannity wondered why the House didn’t just pass a bill extending the Bush tax cuts for everyone.

“OK fine, let’s do that, but in the end, at some point, if the Bush tax cuts are repealed and everyone’s taxes go up, I promise you Republicans will get blamed for it,” she said. “It doesn’t mean you cave on everything, but there are some things Republicans do that feed into what the media is telling America about Republicans.”

“So are you saying that, for PR purposes, that they should give in to Obama on the tax rate?” Hannity asked.

“Not exactly, I–” Coulter said, before stopping herself and saying, “Well, yeah, I guess I am.”

“You’re saying capitulate to Obama?” Hannity stammered. “We don’t have a revenue problem, Ann.”

“We lost the election, Sean!” Coulter replied.

Other right-wing pundits, such as Bill Kristol, have echoed Coulter’s argument. Kristol famously said that it wouldn’t “kill the country” if taxes on millionaires went up.

Michelle Obama Illinois Senate Buzz Intensifes As Poll Shows FLOTUS Leading Mark Kirk

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Illinois has voiced the “Obama For Senate” call before, but according to one poll, the Prairie State may want to repeat it — for Michelle.

In a Dec. 5 roundup of Illinois poll data, Public Policy Polling said Michelle Obama leads Sen. Mark Kirk in a hypothetical 2016 Senate matchup.

The polling firm said the first lady leads Kirk 51-40 in the could-be race. Kirk’s approval rating, according to voters polled, is 34 percent, with a disapproval rating of 19 percent. Meanwhile, Michelle Obama tops out with a 60 percent approval rating, with a 33 percent disapproval.

The first lady even surpasses her husband in popularity in their home state: President Obama’s approval rating is 57 percent positive among Illinois voters.

With her September speech at the Democratic National Convention, the first lady electrified the crowd much the way her husband did when delivering the keynote speech at the 2004 convention (and of course, we know what happened there).

Still, the first lady has insisted political ambitions are non-existent in her post-White House plans. During the White House’s “Take Your Daughters And Sons To Work Day” event in April, she answered “absolutely not” when a young attendee asked if she would ever run for president, reports ABC News.