"Rhythmism?"  Yes Rhythmism!.  I have been searching for dynamic commercial gallery and major institutional supports while  experimenting  with it and presenting exhibitions and lectures based on those practices since 1970.  I am appreciative and humbled for all of the participation I benefited from via the not-for profit / artists'-run galleries and art centers along the way.

Sometimes documented....other times not so.  But life is what really happened. Not what folks missed or simply didn't appreciate."

 In 1970 Onli took up the challenge and inviting opportunity to determine the parameters and potential of a genre derived from the ideas of the Black Cultural revolution yet open-sourced enough to be universal.

Much like "Jazz" or "Rock Music". To move beyond the limited scope that emerges when one is to use the term "Black Art" to refer to that growing range of images and expressions coming from Black visual artists in the Americas since the Black Cultural revolution on the late 1960s.  Being only 18 years of age and  new to the Black Art Scene he was resisted and often scorned for this vision.

When he explained that he was adding distinctions to the broad category of "Black Art"...they still resisted.  He was often "Blackballed in Black Art circles for these innovative efforts.  They often stated he was on  'some White shit"!

His experimental efforts were also scorned by his instructors at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They asserted it was not art, nor worthy of a student at the school.  This opposition led to the Chair of the Painting Department telling the judges for a  Fellowship Contest to illegally ignore Onli's legitimate entry to that contest / exhibition .   The Dean of Students told Onli about this, yet she did nothing to defend his right to be considered as a contestant in that prestigious competition.

His classmates would say Onli was just on  'some weird shit" when he presented it in classroom critiques.  Onli adapted.  He kept Rhythmism away for the unwelcoming confines of the School of the Art Institute while he earned a BFA in Art Education and later a MAAT in Art Therapy.

However Rhythmism was fine and well. Exploding in Fine and Commercial Art applications in Chicago and on a national level and internationally.  In print. In public displays. In exhibitions. In multimedia shows. In mixed media. In videos. In music. In classrooms. In Art Therapy sessions.


There was and still is a tremendous amount of orthodoxy in the Visual Arts World.  It anoints the chosen few who can name genres, claim resources or get major opportunities.  In Onli we see a self determined practice that insisted to persist.  To grow and explore.  To arrive at Rhythmism being a proven genre in the visual arts.

Now he moves to claim those experiments a success.

The Jackman-Goldwasser Residency at the Hyde Park Art Center afford Onli the creative practice space to shift form experimentation  to destination.

 Rhythmism is here to stay!