" Prof. Onli seated on his "Rhythmistic Bench" at the Chicago Children's Museum, Gallerists! Art enthusiasts! Curator's to collect, exhibit and appreciate Rhythmistic Fine Art are welcomed. "The term I launched is Rhythmistic Art as the universal Future-Primitif genre to grow and practice, Narrative, figurative & beyond is my practices' core. Creating visual art transcending trends in a series. Please share this blog."
August 30th, 2020
Rolling with the residency finds me applying paint to the Kokomusik textile panel of my current series and doing more one of a kind wearable art Ts. Over the decades my experiment has often placed Rhythmism in an ubiquitous context and not limited to the cannon of Fine Art of the classroom. Flowing from mainstream to local underground or indie.
August 28th 2020.
I forget that I am still a bit of the stick in the mud type of person. Not really....but in affect. When one spends most of their life since age three sitting at a table drawing and imagining more to draw etc...the bright bubbly warm social nice personality is not always that robust. OOOPS!
So that was my smile. This is my joke. And that is how I play. Huh?
Kokolit for Literature. In values of gray. Size 50" X 40".
Ask me? I luv this Residency. It is a powerful capstone in my practice and career. That is why I am here daily to meet all of the Rhythmisitc objectives and goals. Each of which are measured via effort and visible results. Not a lot of fluff and trends. Actual items produced. Some call that being creative.....I call it being Rhythmistic. Go with my explanation. I am extending an open invitation to all Hot Art Stars and even those curators, historians, arts educators we know came in on the Post Black train.
Y'all would learn a lot in the Rhythmic Zone.
I cannot think better than Allison, The HPAC Director of Exhibitions & Residencies, in someone being a more soulful person....... in my orbit of contemporary Art Centers or Galleries.... who means well and delivers. Not just for me but for all types of Visual Artists.
Even us Stick In Da Muds.
Rhtyhmistic one of a kind Ts. Prices start at $35.00.
August 28th 2020
August 26th 2020
Above is my Studio Space at the Hyde Park Art Center during this
Summer 2020 Flex Residency.
Yesterday not only started my class. I teach Art Appreciation at the downtown Chicago Harold Washington Colleges. Day one was fantastic. All remote with a very smart and dynamic group of students. Since I feel obligated to let folks know about my continuum over decades. To not simply reduce my practice to the limited time spent looking a few items in context of their prior positions on art and who this 68 year old Black dude is. So I open up in strange places about my Artistic past.
Hey? Has anybody seen our old Art friends that went by the name "Post Black? Just asking......
My apologies to those not interested.
Afterwards I got in on the tail end of the ever-cool HPAC Residency Artists gathering.. Outdoors. Social Distant. Cool open air. Staff and several Visual Artists. They were about finished and I added my monologue about my current works plus a story. I told them the PG version of my time working with the Rolling Stones in 1878 near Paris in the EMI Recording Studios.
Below is am image from the project. The album-cover I designed was not used due to it not meeting the censorship standards of that time. Luck me! Whew!
Ok... back to real time......
Afterwards we went to my studio space to experience my current works and for me to talk even more. Questions.....suggestions....and a host of other really brilliant ideas flowed. The Team M & M were amazing they both really know a lot. Sort of like brilliant!
Team M & M made the Rhythmistic art glow with life! It takes that type of investigation and intelligent presence to ignite its life! I luv that whenever it happens. It needs so much more than what I could ever give it.
I wish this had happened sooner. But Covid had its impact.
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I tried to cover the scope of working in Rhythmism.....being a major market illustrator working with oversights and other avenues I flowed through looking t insert as much Rhythmism as I could.
Above is a book cover I designed for Holt Rinehart & Winston circa 1988 along with an illustration for Playboy's OUI Magazing...circa 1974.
I asked Team M&M about more visits. Opportunities to meet serious open minded curators and expressed my willingness to be a part....as in exhibit.....in group shows....with a preference to solo showcasing. I am always open to well managed exhibitions that have an obvious up-side.
Below is my artwork in my Senior Year of High School. "Soul PZZZZ!" watercolors. about 17" X 11"
Destroyed in a major studio fire in 2001. A visual response to the horrros of 1968. King and Kennedy murders. The War in Viet Nam. Riots. Police violence. Women's Rights. Earth Day.. Gay Rights....and pollution.
What was a 16 year old talented artist to do?????
It was OK. I am reminded that I am 68 years old. With 50 years of career practices across Art Therapy, Art Education and Major Market illustration. This with aggressive often medieval oversights. Then comes my Rhythmistic experiments and flow. SO I am not always clear how I come across.
Then there is that Comic Book Art Thing"! The one where folks low ball and deny prestige or positive value to the artists who actually work as cartoonists or graphic novel illustrators. Followed by filtering out or simply not ever looking to see what other works you may have done. Like not reading this blog. Not attending my numerous Rhythmistic Fine Art exhibitions.
Funny how folks love to assert that my position, which is based in experience, is outdated on a variety of levels because that was so long ago and things have changed. Changed?
OK. Last time I looked at a TV and Internet News cycle Black Men were still being hunted and gunned down in front of their families by White Police Officers. Is that this "change"? The terror of those practices makes for a serious backdrop....still....for me and my kind.
Why Rhythmism? Because there is so much more to appreciate in the visual expressions called "Black Art" than tributes to suffering , poor techniques and the honoring of oppression. Do these folks ever ask: "Why Cubism?" Why Surrelaism?" Why Street-Art?". NOPE. But when a gifted intelligent Black teenager decides to name a genre "Rhythmism" and explore its value and potential.....determined to reap its tangible benefits....not be ripped off...not be discredited.......so many in the Black & Mainstream Art Worlds simply looked the other way. Ignored these efforts. Denied its presence. Reducing it to hidden in plain sight.
Mighty Jah!!! They missed out on something really amazing. I pity them and those who follow their leads. None are so bling as the ones who refuse to see.
Self determination is still not appreciated by folks in power. Rarely does any Visual Artist name a genre. Well....that 19 year old did. It emerged form the dynamics of B.A.G. The Black Arts Guild, which he. me. I founded in 1979 to facilitate the process of completed college and moving into the professional spaces of the visual arts while also bring ideas and concepts derived from the opulence of the emergent Black Cultural Revolution. See what y'all missed.....again and again.
Lucky you. Now you know and can safely flow around the World of Art with a new term......a new look.....and a host of newer intellectual, commercial, values related to the future-primitif practices and genre called "Rhythmism". Now I gotta get make it back to the Rhythmic Zone to meet my deadlines for this precious time limited Residency of just under 3 months.
The three above images are whatz happen now! Plan to visit if you please. I am here until October 2nd 2020. I plan to start moving out around Sept. 28th 2020 with my four Kokopelli Panels completed along with a host of wearable Art limited edition to one of a kind ai'r-brushed T Shirts.
Since an image is worth a thousand words I need to just shut up and let the Rhythmsitic Art do the talking.
August 24th 2020.
BOOOM! Allison actually had a few minutes to visit the Rhythmic Zone! Need I say more? NOT!
There is no power like an idea whose time has come! Rhythmism Lives!
August 22nd 2020:
( Big thanks to those who offered some editing notes & tips. My passionate rush to blog often over rides best practices in editing! This should not be a case of "Inventive Spelling" or "Ebonics"!)
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Now that I am in the prep for my return to teaching Art Appreciation at the downtown Chicago Harold Washington College this residency will switch into Ryhthmistic overdrive.
Context, Content, Production, Passion of Documentation will rule my ways. I earned two degrees from the School of the Art Institute along with studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. Then went on to achieve a Doctor's Degree in rt Education. My first degree was from the Olive-Harvey Community College in Chicago where I gave our Key Note Speaker, The late great Black Historian Lerone Bennet, a kiss on the cheek on stage as I collected my AA Degree.
( Above is a photo of me with my high school students from the Kenwood Academy High School, learning about my work in launching the Black Age of Comics in the "Out Of Sequence" group exhibition on the campus of the University of Illinois-Champaign's Krannert Museum of Art. Circa 2008.)
Ironic..that I am still in Arts Academia...for in my Junior year at Calumet High school in 1968, I went to Ms Garcia, our Class Counselor, to ask about college options etc. She shockingly and mockingly shouted, "College? You are a colored boy and therefor will either push a broom or go to the military! Please leave my office!" I had pushed a broom and mop in my childhood in my Grandfather's property.....so I knew a thing or two about all of that.
She had no idea that when she gave that support to my Light Skinned friends that they told me and us more Brown to dark Brown friends too. She, like others, felt that the appartied caste-system of skin complexion was in full effect. I led, with others, in walk outs and protest against this in asking and demanding for overall college prep services and to add Black & African studies to the curriculum.
( The above image is a political-protest-painting of mine that I did in 1971. Age 19. 40" X 40" acrylics on canvas. Location and condition unknown. Traded to fellow B.A.G. Black Arts guild alum, Obie Creed in 1978. )
We were the youthful tip of spear to the overwhelming mighty, emergent Black Cultural Revolution. We were no longer her "Negroes"! True Negroes were amazing people. They paved our way. My Grandfather was born of serious Negro stock in the late 1890s.
Why would I ever want to stay in her office when there was a world to change?
Those successful Spring of 1968 High School Students' walk-outs and results to our Ten Point Demands gave many of us the tools to navigate colleges and higher training without her input or the blockade of systemic racism. We won! Even with the Chicago Police out there shooting above our heads at times...... This is what improvement and empowerment looks like in real time. We opened doors. We went through them. We earned our degrees. We taught and later mentored many. We avoided jail time and thug life.
We manifested Self-Determination! I grew into the Rhythmistic Visual artist who embraced the nexus of Creativity, Culture & Commerce.
This is me on the daily regular this Summer 2020.
Various staff of the Hyde Park Art Center are regularly seen setting up displays, rebooting programming and doing selected administrative duties in prep for the HPAC's re-opening. In my 5 plus weeks here none have managed to visit my Studio Space to see what is taking place. Of the ones I invited, only three have actually visited. They are super-busy! Not bad. I know that we have plans and expectations but then Life steps in. In these Days of Summer 2020 that often means Covid-19.
Each visitor was curiously intelligent yet totally overwhelmed and impressed. One sat to share with me her take away from my Virtual Internet You Tube Studio Visitation. In this she expressed the value of my being grounded in Black American Culture yet still open and respectful of other World Cultures.
For the others who didn't accept my invitation to visit.....they missed a lot as my space is liquid in its flow and dynamic in its manifested Rhythmistic Art. Certain artworks....now addressed and completed are back in storage. Steps along the way are documented....but not available in real time anymore.
I still ask that question about established monied Fine Artists who state they were influenced by comic books or cartoons...thus elevating their status. However those so us who actually worked in the areas of comix or cartoons are diminished as makers of "low Art" thus not being valued as serious Fine Artists.
Well clearly Houston has a problem in mission-control because I am serious. Been collected. There is a Wiki on me to show for my efforts. And as this Summer shows, still quite prolific. One of those artists not limited to brand-centric art like so many of those institutionalized accepted Art Stars.
Very honored to have this Summer 2020 Flex Residency.
This impact and progress has been a manifestation of the Great American Dream. Pulling one's self up, by ones bootstraps. Along with the empowering slogan left to us by the late Honrabale Elijah Muhammed, "Do For Self!"
All with a little help from my friends such as Allison and Kate of the Hyde Park Art Center.
However the original primary vision, ( to reclaim my Air-Brush Practices & complete the four Kokopelli based textile panels while attracting attention form major curators, art collectors & historians ), is still the compass in this preciously time-limited Summer 2020 Flex Residency at the Hyde Park Art Center.
Wearable art is so basic to humans. From caves to hi-rises, to military uniforms or athletes...it is all expressed in the embellished garments. Wearable art. In the 1980s I had a line called Onliwear. It was wearable art. Mostly air-brushed based. Process wise it led me to the quilting concepts. Therefore in this Residency's revival of me and the air-brush, I will be doing wearable art. Mostly not of trendy concepts or political protests. But rather a protest against sterile visions, art or ideas.
The full force of streams of color harnessed into one-of-a-kind expressions. Salvos bombing the commercial logo-tribes of the world. To liberate them of the oppression of the Big Brands with the offer of unique hand crafted wearable art. T Shirts are powerful carriers of amazing artistic statement that can later be personalized by the wearer. Traveling places unique to its owner.
Bringing Art To The People!
Funny how the fact that he is White and I am Black flows as a normal aspect of our artistic efforts.
In some ways we are what progress looks like in real-time. That thing of united races. Being appreciative beyond mere tolerance.
Being up for the downstroke finds me more intense in effort, technique, time, and concept. This is when I am now aware that the Residency is ending. A lot had been done already. Each week I have a measurable process. Interviews. Decisions. Wearable Art. Promotions. Not much from visits or the like as Covid Accommodations and HPAC priorities rule the day when it comes or interactions, dialoque and criterions based exchanges.
I met four of the other Residency Artists here. They all seem to be on the Year-Long-Residency-Plan. Given I have a quarter of that time.....I am a bit too focused to do a lot of visiting.
Daily I reach out globally to curators, collectors and institutions that would benefit from my Rhythmistic Practice. A Lion in winter is still a Lion. An Artiste in the vintage phase is still a capable Artiste.
Left is for the Visual Arts, Right is for the performing Arts. Go Kokopelli!
Aug. 17th 2020,
Over the decades I was teased outright or simply asked, "Is Rhythmism real?
The international Art World....its upper register where careers and fortunes are engineered, is very orderly about which trends and who gets the nod. Rarely is it orderly. The power of the actual artwork is not as forceful as the power of these political manifestations that select and reject. That makes or breaks careers and the Art the public is told has tangible monied value in speculation or auctions. Collectors & curators tend to follow these guides.
However staying power has its own flow. Effort over decades takes real human drive. Triumph over the odds served by a life in the visual arts requires resiliency, vision, resources internal & external and flies beyond the limits of the selection process. All of this induces measurable growth.
Entrepreneurship helps. I am often confused how an artist is deemed "powerful" or that these art works are now the "intersection of" yet when taken on its own merits or a criterion....the artwork is often lame or sterile. Hype wins again and the power-broker circles maintain their control of who, when, where & why. I am often reminded that The Artistes normally never name the genre. That is the rights of the Art Critic of Art Historian. Well too late. I called this extensive future-primitif aspect of Art Making Rhythmism and I insist that it has unlimited growth potential. I launched it. Plowed the terrain with its seeds. Now in this non-experimental period look to enjoy its fruitful harvests.
There is no powerful cash spending audience to force a balance in this process.
Of course Rhythmism is real. It has been tested. It has been proven. But will it be selected? I am reminded how my great late brother Vincent Van Gogh sold only one painting in his life, and that was to his brother. How he was tortured and ridiculed during his life as an experimental dedicated Visual Artist. But now the powerful selection folks have placed unheard of values to any of his works, belongings or writings. I often look to my good brother Vincent to better evaluate Rhythmism. My career. I have certainly sold more than one single painting. And I had no brother to buy it.
Who do I fight for? I fight for the Van Goghs of the World be they Others, Inners, Outers, Blacks, Whites, Disabled, Brown, Yellow and of course my favorites those always wanting total control....the Ruby Red Martians. This amazing Summer 2020 Residency ends Oct. 2nd 2020.
Aug. 13th 2020: "The Residency is doing well. Covid Accommodations & modification abound to keep us safe.
"I am connecting a few crucial points in my relationship with the Hyde Park Art Center. In 2007 I had the opportunity to complete a Cool Globe. However it needed to be completed in a single week-end. I hired a group of my more dedicated High School Art Students. I needed to locate a studio space with a doorway wide enough for this 6ft diameter globe to be worked on.
My space, with its narrow doorways, was not the answer. I asked an art center where I had been part of a group exhibition. They never got back to me. Then I asked Allison, The HPAC Director of Exhibition & Residencies, if the HPAC had space I could use as a temporary studio to create the Globe.. She surprised me by saying the HPAC had a globe already. She suggested we paint that one then have my coming Cool Globe delivered there when the completed one was picked up. That gave me about a four day weekend production window.
DEAL! Of course I said yes. She explained we would be working in an area of the building that was to be a coffee shop, but was under the very beginning of construction. It was a raw studio-like space. Perfect....with the globe already there. ( Now that space is a coffee shop.)
Her calm casual trust and delight in our project was so rare in my practice....so refreshing.
We easily met our deadline. This was a proud moment for me and my students. I had each one to sign the Globe in proven celebration of their artistic participation, We expressed People of the World holding hands united in the fight to overcome the challenges of Global Warming. I enhanced areas on the Globe with a host of air-brush bases accents. We did a great job for an important cause..
