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.