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.
Ask the curators, collectors, scholars and even Black Art Stars of today what they know of Rhythmism or the works from members of the Black Arts Guild. B.A.G. Curious to hear their responses. Ask them why this history and artwork seems to be slighted and even Blackballed in Black Art shows, narratives and collections. Yet B.A.G. did and its legacy continues to do so much today.
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.
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