Nov. 8th, 2020

"The Birth of Rhythmism"

Way back in the 20th Century I was living and working in Paris as a free-lance illustrator.  Along the way I won a French National Drawing Contest that resulted in a solo exhibition.

 I named it: "Presenting My Rhythm / Rhythmistic Art". 

It ran for a month with great critical acclaim along with traffic.  It was at the FIAP, where various groups of cultural tourists an professionals interested in learning about Paris and France came.  There were soccer teams from Argentina to businessmen from Viet Nam.  I got to watch them while they looked at the art. I talked with many of them. 

 These profound exchanges helped convince me to stay the path and to keep working on all things Rhythmistic.

I worked for the American Language trendy hip newspaper, "The Paris Metro".  I was in their regular rotation and tried to sneak as much Rhythmism as possible in my efforts.  It was usually screened out.  Sanitized.  This went on until a new art director came along.  In a treatment about the Paris Punk scene it also mentioned that FIAP Solo exhibition in a inset about me and the writer/book critic, Ron Blunden.

Unfortunately I lost my original art and issues of that newspaper. However I did locate a photocopy of it.

The article was entitled "As My Guitar Gently Weeps". Unfortunately the folks that ran the Paris Metro newspaper hid from me info about all of the fan mail and requests for my services that resulted from that dynamic illustration back in 1978.  One of the publication's owners was South African and didn't like the idea of a kaffir getting glory from his newspaper.

After a while, I decided to return to Chicago because they would not help me to secure a proper work identity registration with the French Government. I was fatigued from working under-the-table and often being vastly underpaid!  

Back in Chicago where I was still renting a kick-ass two-bedroom coach-house full of art supplies and a great landlord. There in a position of security and power to morph ONLI STUDIOS into an indie-publisher moving my operation beyond the limits of free-lance illustration and back-stabbing politics.

But I did learn that Rhythmism was real and that Systemic Racism would require some special attention from me. I was 26 years old. 1978 was great!