afterthought**

afterthought**
Artists' Talk:  Conversation with Ellyn Weiss
DC Arts Center 2/12/17

"Toxicity in the Air"
an installation to provoke awareness of pollution poisoning the atmosphere using recycled and repurposed materials with petroleum products...
(handmade paper using recycled paper and/or lint as pulp base, recycled tar paper, found vinyl cord)

additional elements:
Performance A
Actor stands at exhibit entrance and passes out face masks to all upon exit.
Performance B
Actor stands at podium wearing face mask reading statistics about air pollution

**refers to science/scientific method without incorporated scientific elements
    reconstructs empirical experience as science/scientific sample
    uses common pastoral landscape (clouds) to reference urban pollution




abstraction from a writers point of view
means shared language
like french or spanish or farsi or zulu
how many ways to say
whatever
are how many ways to say
whatever

writing
"abstract"
a narrative?
a vision?
a mind game
perception
how u look at it
how u see
reading
it

material-
a (first)  level of language)
texture
shape
form
color
pattern
line by
line





starting point:
Thanks
to DCAC, B Stanley, Phil and Mike for agreeing to show this body of work in the context of a retrospective...
to the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities for awarding me a fellowship based on this work.

the show title "January 15 - October 16" are execution dates and include all the work produced during that time with the exception of "Walk in the Park: Apartment Living" and "The Black Army," both on view at the Prince George's County African American Museum and Cultural Center.

Organized in three parts, it featured the installation "Toxicity in the Air," "3sided," a studio exercise and a PopUp Patrons' Boutique which represented the retrospective aspect with a catalog and miniature collages using paper dating back to my days at Eastern Market...

artist statement:
My practice integrates image, object and frame using abstraction to make pictures or settings that read as something familiar. My intent is to articulate issues of contemporary culture and art thru installations and objects that embody social and/or aesthetic ideas. I work to strengthen the artists' relationship with the public at large and to challenge how "fine art" is being defined for "ordinary" people.

random thoughts:
abstraction is a mind game         out the box/on the fringes    
      competition      literal vs allusion vs illusion        
                       being independent in the art world            necessity
the more people that understand a language the more effectively you communicate

Washington Post Review of Solo Exhibition

Reviewers are not necessarily critics anymore dissecting methodology and technical prowess. What is important to me is that a review provides lasting documentation of the work outside of the artist' own efforts. This is crucial for independent artists  because it creates a starting point for discovery and research by scholars and collectors alike... 

Mark Jenkins' review in the Washington Post this weekend:

Sheila Crider 

Making objects to represent unmaking is also Sheila Crider’s method in “January ’15-October ’16,” a show of paper, fabric and wood pieces at the District of Columbia Arts Center. The selection includes “Water Meditation,” whose blue triangles suggest ocean waves unfouled by mankind. The centerpiece, however, is “Toxicity in the Air,” a series that depicts poisoned skies and sooty clouds.

The notes for the show were written by none other than Ellyn Weiss, who commends Crider for addressing “the most critical issue of our time.” Like “Pestilence,” Crider’s work includes many hanging objects that cast foreboding shadows as they imply the universe above our heads. “Urban Runoff” arrays more than 50 grubby samples made from painted dryer lint. This crypto-scientific display recalls local artist Julie Wolfe’s jars of water collected from urban sources. But where Wolfe adds chemicals to elicit vivid hues, Crider offers mostly industrial shades of gray. Those blue paper waves offer just about the only color in this show that a 19th-century landscape painter might appreciate.

Sheila Crider: January ’15-October ’16 On view through Feb. 12 

District of Columbia Arts Center, 2438 18th St. NW. 202-462-7833 dcartscenter.org/exhibitions.htm 

* correction: lint is varnished with acrylic but not painted.

("Industrial Smog" & "Urban Runoff" photos by Gregory Staley)

    

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/in-the-galleries-these-landscapes-are-something-short-of-idyllic/2017/02/03/e77610f4-e718-11e6-b82f-687d6e6a3e7c_story.html?utm_term=.16795a8cba2

his review of "Volume" in 2014

Sheila Crider

As she demonstrates with a series of monotypes now at Honfleur Gallery, Sheila Crider can layer complexity onto a flat image. But her show is titled “Volume” because of its other work, which comes off the wall more assertively than Jason Gubbiotti’s. The D.C. artist paints on a variety of paper, cuts the sheets into partial strips and then hangs them so that gravity chooses their contours. The artworks turn into banners, DNA-like helixes or — in the case of the brown-red “Volume 11” — sinews that suggest an anatomy textbook or a butcher shop.

Crider’s technique recalls Sam Gilliam, who began exhibiting unframed canvases in the 1960s. But most of Crider’s hanging pieces are snipped into thin segments, so they dangle rather than drape. The two artists also possess different color senses: Crider paints mostly in a single hue or a limited tonal range, relying on shape and light to vary the effect. Yet the acrylic pigment (and occasionally plasticized paper) gives the works a contemporary sheen. Where the artist’s attractively muted prints are largely in earth and rain tones, punctuated by an occasional red slash, her sculptural paintings boast a city-street vitality.

Volume: Sheila Crider On view through Dec. 19 at Honfleur Gallery, 1241 Good Hope Rd. SE. 202-365-8392. www.honfleurgallery.com.

("Volume #11 photo by Greg Staley)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/in-the-galleries-jason-gubbiottis-war-paint-at-civilian-art-projects/2014/12/03/040e8468-796f-11e4-9a27-6fdbc612bff8_story.html?utm_term=.96136a74c5aa

Challenging the Status Quo

it's sometimes a lonely
and thankless job
but as they say
somebody's got to do it

challenging
the status quo

tension so thick
I can't maintain civility
(I could but I don't want to)

so I leave
having a last word
unsaid

as ordinary people
lead lives entrenched
in mainstream convention

pulled out of revelry by a wrong number
a telephone sound
ringing
ringing
ringing
pavlovian response
wants protests to color inside the lines

we attended the Malcolm X school of civil disobedience
and we remember Viet Nam
dramatic conditions
so unconventional we want to call it anything
but its name...

as we are looked down upon
yet
up to
in admiration performing
a loose definition as is
expected

there is only
what we maladroitly assume
is our right to an opinion
to be told yet again
our message is off point
and doesnt belong in this arena

Open Studio 11/2016 (Documentation)

Open Studio June 2014

Featured Work: "Volume" 

       16 panels varied dimensions
       exhibitions: Honfleur Gallery, WDC November - December, 2014
                        New Door Creative, Baltimore, MD  June, 2016

January 2015 - November 2016

context: "Volume" completed. St. Elizabeths East public art project successfully installed. nothing pressing coming up. think volume think triangle think space. recycle. exercise. study. experiment.

process: stitch, weave, collage, draw, paint
materials: paper, fabric, thread, wire, string, metal, wood

influential opportunity: invited by curator Molly Merson/Gallery Krom to participate in a group show about the environment 

Featured Work                               

Toxicity in the Air Installation 

4 works on paper (2016)
exhibition: District of Columbia Art Center, January/February 2017

"The Red Menace"
acrylic, handmade recycled paper, vinyl cord, bamboo and rose wood

"Urban Runoff"
acrylic, cotton, linen and silk dryer lint, purchased acetate boxes

"The Toxic Air We Unknowingly Breathe"
handmade recycled paper, lint pulp paper, acrylic,cotton thread
exhibition: June-July 2016 Proto Gallery, Hoboken, NJ




"Industrial Smog"
lint pulp paper, acrylic, bamboo, vinyl cord, tar paper, plastic coated pine rod

Current Project: Painting on Quilt Batting

"Walk in the Park: Apartment Living"
9 Panels (varied dimensions)
acrylic, cotton thread, plastic coated wire, cotton-poly batting
exhibition: Prince Georges County African American Museum and Cultural Center Winter-Spring, 2017

work in progress not pictured:

series of 10 small wall hangings with exterior linear element

Ongoing Exercise: "3sides"

recycle old work, make 3 sided standing elements

a) "The Black Army"
acrylic, graphite, vinyl cord, rag and recycled paper
b) "small soldiers"
acrylic, graphite, cotton thread, recycled paper










"Water Meditation Tool"
acrylic, ph neutral drawing and Japanese papers

"Red Line Study 2016"
acrylic, vinyl cord, Japanese and ph neutral drawing paper











"The Chase"
acrylic, ink, rag, recycled and Japanese papers



not pictured:
"Ghost Ships" (7 standing panels)
acrylic, coloring pencil, graphite, joss, recycled and Japanese papers, vinyl cord, bamboo

"The Elite Guard" (4 standing elements)
acrylic, graphite, cotton thread, steel wire, recycled paper

"Suspended Animation" (3 elements)
acrylic, cotton thread, vinyl cord, rag and recycled papers

going into 2017

 Influential Opportunities

Artist Residency to make new work in Paducah, Kentucky
(become a Residency Angel here)

(tentative) Participation in group show "Reconstruction" with large format work

(Curator: Michelle Talibah/New Door Creative, Baltimore)

Mastry: An Opportunity for the Art World to Talk About Skill

Kerry James Marshall is flavor of the month in the art world right now with "Mastry" at Met Breuer in New York.  It's a singular occasion-- the first black American honored in this way since Jacob Lawrence in 1960 at the Brooklyn Museum, if one does not count Romare Bearden, primarily a collagist, at the National Gallery of Art in WDC in 2003.

 Last century painting was declared "dead,"  a mantra embraced by the art world that allowed it to veer towards Duchamps' philosophy that everything could be art. I haven't seen this show yet but I did see several of the recent canvases and drawings at the National Gallery of Art in 2013. There is clear narrative, clear intent and lots of language in these works. Marshall's retrospective proves that painting is alive and well if an artist is willing to work but above all, has something to say.

In the reviews, there is a lot of focus on the importance of his black figures and contemporary black life referencing art history and the void these works fill in traditional Western Art. Many talk about how adept he is at storytelling and interspersing references to the famous painters he admires within the confines of these magnificent black images. They mention his obsession with skill but seem to all end up describing the images and pointing out references to the great white painters they contain.  One reviewer thought the show got too much buildup and needed editing. I suspect she (like many others will inevitably do) gave the work a superficial glance and just looked at the pictures instead of looking at the painting, painting being a verb.

Looking at how the images are rendered reveals an expert's understanding and manipulation of all the techniques developed by painters over the last century to create a cohesive picture that makes one focus on the work's narrative and intent. Who else has done this? Cecily Brown has been admired for creating figurative paintings that look like abstract expressionism; Marshall's work is so subtle, you might not see these inclusions without dismissing the narrative to focus on the composition and architecture of the work. Reviews that do not discuss his technical prowess in depth imply that he is important simply because he made black figures powerful in western art.

Marshall is doing soooo much more for western art than filling the color void. He's raising the bar for all artists everywhere to make art that introduces us to new ways of seeing with the tools we've always had at our disposal. It's a challenge for both representational and abstract painters.

If the art world continues to focus on how skillfully Marshall paints black people in situ, and keeps declaring that he is a great black painter, it loses an opportunity to take a stab at the institutional racism embedded in art history and the contemporary art world. This is an opportunity to alter the narrative of what makes a painter great and take us back into an arena where we appreciate and value the skill of execution over subject that can bring real criticism back into the art world.

Like Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Picasso or DeKooning, Kerry James Marshall is not a great black artist. He is a great artist period.

David Adjaye and Theaster Gates @ the Hirshhorn 9/21/16

                                        David Adjaye and Theaster Gates 

having extemporaneous convo 
at the Hirshhorn
complex, profound, totally cerebral

you had to be thinking to follow this conversation

it was all about tangible ideas 
being translated through practice into art,
the work being present, and inhabiting place 

the importance of narrative 

a methodology to engage

clarity of intention

authorship

in the absence of a language
the necessity to MAKE language 

they discussed world travelling 
and coming to realize
where you come from 
your most powerful art will come from

Theaster talking 'bout 
his Sensei Sister and the permeating musK of cooking greens... 

this was an incredible dialogue between an architect and an artist
without art-world pretense
talking about making work that embodies, exemplifies and honors 
the nuances and history of how we have lived and live now
philosophically
taking black culture out of the realm of spectacle
and away from the burden of being "ART" about identity

Oh, 
Man!!
It was beautiful!

(nuthin' but the truth)

Ecstatic to bear witness September 22, 2016

When is race NOT a spectacle in the art world?

OuTtheCube

re: blackness-in-abstraction-- An Objection to the Use of the Phrase

Blackness in abstraction is NOT appropriation of anyone's philosophy! Contemporary artists add to the work of Beauford Delaney, Norman Lewis, Joe Overstreet, Alma Thomas, Sam Gilliam, Jack Whitten, Howardena Pindell, Ed Clarke (etc) 
without creating references in written statements 
relating to the black id'entity the art-world understands. (think PostBlack) 
Sam Gilliam was recently described as undefinable with "art-world catch phrases!"(Washington Post)

in 2000 I coined a term acknowledging the role of black artists in expanding the language and boundaries of abstract painting. It's defined as a way of working, not as a way to classify black artists: 

blackstraction (blak-strak’ sh-n) n.

1. the objectification of  painting;

2. nonrepresentational drawings and paintings stressing formal internal relationships at times employing craft techniques and three dimensional presentation.  blackstractionist n. an artist engaging therein…

blackstraction (blak-strak’ sh-n) v.t.

to make markings with color on diverse surfaces that relate to each other and their environment in two and three dimensions   blackstractioned, blackstractioning

Blackstractionism (blak-strak’sh-niz-m) n. Fine Art

a style of emotive non-representational painting which appeared in the United States in the late 20^th century employing craft techniques and sometimes three dimensional presentation  b) theory and practice of blackstraction

  (pass the word on: Blackstraction)

not surprising there is not much research readily available around this topic because artists working like this have a tendency not to define their work by race, generally are not well known and do not do well in the art-world. 
   
artists and dealers both recognize the financial  and critical benefits of "other" in whatever capacity - ethnicity - gender - etc
when the artists'  "subject" is depicted 
the way the art-world expects it to be...
which is why Sanford Biggers' work referencing
Fat Albert** will never be attributed with the power
of contextual ambiguity that would allow
a multiplicity of readings outside race! 

not really odd, though...
it's how ART in the 
ART-world 

is 

branded

marketed 

identified
  
(race art) 
(gender art)
(not white art)


                                                                               


 
**Introduction to the term can be found in this excerpt: 
blackstraction-blak-strak-sh-n-n.

Project History:
blackstraction-putting-the-word-out

***http://www.artnews.com/2016/07/11/black-bodies-white-cubes-the-problem-with-contemporary-arts-appropriation-of-race/