Archive for the ‘visual artist’Category

Montserrat Daubon and Pedro Villalta Pod Sculpture Livens Up Lenox Avenue

Driving or walking north of 50th street on Park Avenue, you can’t help but notice the Park Avenue Malls Public Art installation. Now Harlemnites can rave about their own public arts project mounted by two local artists Montserrat Daubon and Pedro Villalta. The duo erected the first public art on Lenox Avenue and 124th Street median, sought help through the local community organization by submitting a proposal to the Mount Morris Park Community Improvement Association, who aided them in securing permits from DOT, that also awarded them $1000.00. Requiring more funding from completion of the project, the artists launched major Kickstarter campaign raising $8,520.00, surpassing their goal of $7,500.00 needed to complete this project.

“The Pod” organic shape—made of hollow steel, viewers get to feel the rough surface texture layered with dripped bronze over the surface skin. Looming above trees and pedestrians the foreboding sculpture stands 10 feet tall, and 3 feet at its widest point and it’s mounted on a tiered series of steel plates. Sadly, the pod sculpture slotted for only 11-month, but its still exciting seeing public art on Lenox Avenue liven up Harlem’s booming cultural scene. I’m enjoying seeing “The Pod” on Lenox Avenue, and hoping the duo or other artist creates more exploratory artistic projects. Better yet, let’s create a Harlem Public Art Fund.

 

17

06 2012

A Glimpse into The African and African Caribbean Design Diaspora Festival

This is an excerpt featured on the Studio Museum in Harlem blog, it’s my first in a series of design articles.

London is one of the hottest and most creative cities, bristling with a multicultural community. Yet its Black artists and designers have remained largely untapped. That is until now. Just this past September, London was booming with design festivals showcasing innovative furniture, objects and fabulous fashions. Among them was the latest installment of the African and African Caribbean Design Diaspora Festival, a hotbed of new ideas, inspiration and creativity. This year’s theme, “?Choices!,” attracted some 22,000 visitors (2,000 more than in 2010). The AACDD festival took place from September 9 to 25, coinciding with the London Design Festival and constituted AACDD’s second successful year. It was the latest project launched by the British European Design Group’s (BEDG) three-year initiative, which is playing an increasingly important role in diversifying London’s creative community.

The festival director, Karin Phillips, Design Director Clemens Hackl, and Nigerian-born designer and curator, Emamoke Ukeleghe, orchestrated this production. The artists represented included roughly 100 graphic designers, multimedia artists, illustrators, industrial and product designers, and visual artists of African and African-Caribbean descent working in the U.K., Africa, the Caribbean, Japan and the United States. Hackl explained, “These artists and designers made a huge impact on visitors with their innovative works.” And thanks to funding from the London Arts Council, this year the AACDD Festival reached more people through a well-designed festival guide, website and social media platforms.

AACDD’s festival took place in three main locations: BargeHouse in OXO Towers in SouthBack, Hospital Club, and the Re-Loved Lounge at 100% Design. With 1,333 square feet of raw warehouse space, the BargeHouse served as the perfect blank canvas setting for browsing art lovers. It featured four floors of curated work by fine artists, illustrators, graphic designers, fashion designers, multimedia artists, and photographers. On one floor, Below the Surface, a photographic project by young black teenagers from London’s African and African-Caribbean communities, was a whopping success. The teenagers documented the colorful facets of everyday life, and produced an eye grabbing collection shot with disposable cameras given away through AACDD’s tweets and Facebook postings. For more click here>>

 

 


17

01 2012

Romare Bearden Stamps


This is a significant moment in time for the United States Postal Commission to select the works of Romare Bearden, one of the 20th century’s most distinguished American Artist. Not many visual artist works are selected for stamps, this auspice moment is unique being it is not just one stamp, but four paintings of Bearden’s work reproduced on stamps. The works selected are Prevalence of Ritual: Conjur Woman, (1964), Conjunction (1971), Odysseus: Poseidon, The Sea Gold—Enemy of Odysseus (1977), Falling Star (1979). This series portrays Bearden’s affinity for capturing the lifestyle of black Americans or syncopated beats of jazz musicians and literature,  infused with mixed media collages.

The United States Postal Service issued the stamps on September 28, 20011, which coincide with the 100th anniversary of Bearden’s birth September 2, 1911.  For more information about Romare Bearden Foundation and the centennial events:  http://www.beardenfoundation.org

 

14

11 2011

Everyday Design by Maleneb

The debut article of my first By Design column featured in International Review of African American Art, Fall 2011 issue spotlights the fabulous Malene Barnett, carpeting and rug designer.

The Art of Everyday Use
MALENE BARNETT CLIENTS ARE FLOORED BY HER RUGS
Not all carpeting rolls off assembly lines in factories or is imported from exotic places in the Middle East, China or India. Hand-made floor coverings that rise to the level of art are created by Malene Barnett, principal and owner of Maleneb in Brooklyn. She has built a brand specializing in hand-woven carpeting and rugs of original design and high-quality fibers for commercial sites and homes.

At the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, Barnett initially majored in fashion illustration but  really longed to paint. Her decision to change majors was clinched when she happened to see a display of  projects by students in the textile surface design department.  As a textile design major, she was inspired by the early textile renderings of Lois Mailou Jones, a young, African American designer who went on to become a major 20th century American artist.

While taking a carpet design course, Barnett won first prize for a Stark Carpets-sponsored, carpet design competition, and committed to this specialized field in textile design.

Barnett graduated in 1996 and worked for a succession of companies, including Afritext where she modernized their line of African prints; and Nourison, an industry leader, developing products for major household brands.

After four years at Nourison, Barnett had an urge to explore the world. She quit her job and, carrying just a backpack with seven outfits, traveled to India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and Hong Kong.  Each environment piqued her curiosity about the indigenous spiritual symbols, patterns and architecture of the cultures that she visited. She sketched this iconography in a small sketchbook as ideas for new designs.

Back in the States, Barnett worked freelanced for her previous employer, Nourison, designing handmade accent rugs and carpeting for some well-established consumer brands such as Bed, Bath and Beyond, Nicole Miller, Liz Claiborne and Macy’s. With her guidance, Nourison profits grew from $1 million to $15 million. Then Barnett was offered an opportunity to start a carpeting line with JLA Homes, a home furnisings company; once again profits increased.

When the economy started to tank in 2008, Barnett decided to launch Maleneb.  “Why would you even think of starting up a studio in such a dismal economy?” I wondered. “The timing was right,” she replied.  In leaving Nourison, she again was following a calling. She defines herself as a visual artist, with a propensity for hand drawing and painting, who loves to design carpeting and rugs. And besides, she explained, “most of my previous projects offered little exploration of my own ethnic sensibility.”

The luxurious residential rugs and carpeting in the Maleneb collection are hand woven designs based on the icons, patterns and colors that Barnett observed during her travels and as she continues to look to  artifacts from various ethnic cultures and the natural environment for inspiration, her work is informed by food rituals, ancient architectural structures, traditional garments, unusual  textile patterns and paintings are a part of the mix.

The collection consists of three distinctive themes: Signature reflects the diversity of everyday life, for example, the Mehndi-inspired rugs of rich burgundy and red wool yarn with linear designs based on a palm decorated with henna tattooing for a wedding. Classical— traditional motifs and icons such as the Adinkra writing system of Ghana. And texture which explores the multiplicity of organic forms in nature. In order to achieve the characteristics of flowing water, mountainous landscapes and tree trunk textures for the Texture theme, Barnett mastered a distinctive technique of creating varying pile heights.

As a member of the Good Weave organization working to end child labor in South Asia, all Maleneb pieces carry the “Good Weave” brand to distinguish them from those made under exploitative circumstances.

Besides designing the collection, Barnett gets numerous requests for commissioned projects. For example, Ken Staves, an architect based in Calgary, Canada, called to request rugs for his new home, based on photography he had shot of magnificent, New York City architectural skylines.  From this imagery, Barnett crafted a series of tapestries that now hang on the walls in Staves’ home. The Carl Ross Design Croup hired Barnett to create special rug tapestries for the lobby walls of the Hyatt Vacation Club Hacienda del Mar in Mexico. Her design for this commission was inspired by the 15th century rock art of the Taino Indians of Mexico.

A spunky seven-year-old girl passion for drawing and painting has become one of the top designers of carpeting and rugs in New York City.

Limited Edition Tap Tap rug, abstract angular colorful shapes, with varying piles based on the colorful, hand-painted local tap tap buses in Haiti, this rug design was featured in the Global African Project exhibition catalog, 2010.

For more information on Maleneb click: maleneb.com 

 

 

The Afro Talks Back

Present Tense: The 2011 D-Crit Conference: Michele Washington, Untangling the Naps: The Afro Talks Back from D-Crit on Vimeo.

“Untangling the Naps” investigates the cultural and historical significance of the Afro, and how the afro is expressed today. I explore images of the Afro/’fro/Natural and how they were used to define blackness, racial pride, and ultimately, the black design aesthetic.

The themes for this work focus on identity, hair, blackness and power, ideas expressed in the statement by Robin D. G. Kelley, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at USC College.

“No matter what we might think about culture and style as a terrain of struggle, hairstyle politics, particularly in the Black community, reveal a great deal about power—the power of white over black, men over women, employer over workers, state over citizens.” — By Robin D. G. Kelley, Nap Time: Historicizing the Afro

 

My field of enquiry is based on my long-term research into the black aesthetic influence on graphic design in the twentieth century. The title, “Untangling the Naps,” suggests how I have used the Afro as a graphic narrative, in the next phase of my quest to understand the black aesthetic. In my research I investigate the historical and cultural significance of the Afro in the past, and in its current expressions. I have also researched the struggles that describe the “politics of style,” and explore the images and signifiers of the Afro/’fro/Natural that are used to define blackness, racial pride, and the new black design aesthetic of hip. My objective is to illustrate the ways this natural hairstyle has been used as a significant graphic element in the black vernacular narrative and in social media to brand black hipness.

 

Parsons Challenge: The Dearth of African-American Artists, Designers

Architect Craig L. Wilkins, design scholar Carol Tulloch, and art historian Kymberly Pinder at the Parsons conference (photos by Jonathan Grassi, courtesy of Parsons

Last weekend March 26 Parsons School of Design presented Black Studies in Art and Design Education addressed arguably the the disproportionate number of students and faculty of color in Design Schools not just in the United States but across the globe in countries likes England, Canada and South Africa. This major event was organized by Coco Fusco and Yvonne Watson professors at Parsons School of Design. I was not only in attendance, but I also spoke on a panel addressing the troubling gap that persist within the classrooms of design and art schools. Bill Gaskin, of Parsons moderated my panel Curricular Reform in the Foundation and Advanced Studio Courses presenters included Janice Cheddie, from UK, Van Dyke Lewis from Canada,  Mabel O. Wilson of Columbia University and myself. It was such an exhilarating experience for me to interface with some of the best black scholars in design, architecture, art history and fashion, it is not often that such opportunities happen in one setting.  I must commend Coco Fusco and Yvonne Watsons for taking a strident position and challenging the needs for an overhaul in the academe of design and art schools which is seriously long overdue for revision. Many of the big design and art schools had major showing of faculty and administrators from Pratt Institute, Yale University and MICA.

As reported  in the Chronicle of Higher Education by By W. Ian Bourland

Why are there so few black artists and designers?  The conference, Black Studies in Art and Design Education: Past Gains, Present Resistance, Future Challenges, held last weekend at Parsons The New School for design, investigated both the causes and possible solutions for what is arguably a disproportionate paucity of students and instructors of color in the fields of art, architecture, and design.

Although many of the themes discussed by panels composed of veteran educators and practitioners were not new, Black Studies was notable for its emphasis on concrete and pragmatic solutions for educators.  The timing, moreover, could not be better: On the one hand, humanities and arts budgets within higher education have been roiled by recent economic challenges; on the other, the wider marketplace has capitalized on work by black and other minority practitioners during the past five years. The Phillips de Pury’s 2010 “Africa Auction” was highly lucrative for the auction house, and artists such as Glenn Ligon, Kara Walker, Yinka Shonibare, and Julie Mehretu have been the subject of marquee exhibitions in major global institutions, including the Whitney and Smithsonian museums.

For more checkout chronicle.com

Van Dyke Lewis standing, Mabel Wilson, (seated) and Michele Y.Washington.


 

 

 

Black Studies in Art & Design Education Conference

Coming in March
Black Studies in Art & Design Education Conference at the The New School

March 26th-27th 2011. Two Day Conference on interdisciplinary conference on Black Studies in Art and Design Education, featuring speakers from art, fashion. architecture, urban planning, art and design history and theory. Organised by Coco Fusco and Yvonne Watkins, Parsons The New School for Design, New York. Presenters include: Craig Wilkins, University of Michigan; Mabel Wilson, Columbia University; Noel Mayo, Ohio State; Carol Tulloch, Chelsea College of Art and Design; Jennifer Gonzales, North Carolina State University; Michele Y. Washington, School of Visual Arts; Kim Piner, School of the Arts Institute of Chicago; Noliwe Rooks, Princeton University; Clyde Johnson MICA are amongst the list of designers, cultural and design critics, and educators presenters.

The conference is intended to be a forum for reflection on the troubling gap between the notable significance of Black creativity in global culture and its lack of presence in art and design education. The goal of the conference is to elaborate and assess strategies of reform that would diversify curricular offerings and thus improve education for all art and design students while simultaneously generating a more supportive environment for Black students and faculty.

Scholars and practitioners in Fine Arts, Industrial Design, Fashion Design, Architecture, Urban Planning and Art and Design History and Theory will engage in an interdisciplinary discussion about the challenges involved in rethinking  curriculum, engaging with historically disenfranchised communities, and recruiting and retaining Black students and faculty. The conference will also feature two keynote speeches by prominent members of the fields under  figures whose efforts have been central to diversifying the many fields that comprise art and design studies. Panels will address the following topics: rethinking art and design theory and history courses in light of the global influence of cultures of the African diaspora; curricular reform in practical courses of art and design; strategies of engagement with black communities; Black student experiences in art and design schools; and the specific challenges of recruiting and retaining Black students and faculty in school of art and design.

photo credit: http://www.blackstudies.ucsb.edu

JAMES BALDWIN’S GLOBAL IMAGINATION

James Baldwin Global Imagination:

February 17 to 20, Thursday to Sunday
Contact baldwinconference@gmail.com for information

Check out their website for Conference schedule, location and other details: http://www.csgsnyu.org

Staged in the context of global economic insecurity, a planet gripped by the ravages of war and climate change, ever-increasing gaps in wealth, as well as rampant fundamentalism (East and West), “James Baldwin’s Global Imagination” is intended as an examination of globality not simply as a matter of demography but as an urgent call to re-consider the contemporary utility of Baldwin’s expansive injunction to William Faulkner (and, in fact, to us all), “[t]hat any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.” These proceedings are thus proposed as an opportunity to take seriously Baldwin’s consistent and insistent proposal that categories of difference represent an early misnaming, a dangerous and cowardly misrecognition of the moral imagination required to confront not only our mortality but also the brutal legacies of our collective histories.

Confirmed plenary speakers, respondents, and musicians:
M. Jacqui Alexander, University of Toronto
Awam Amkpa, New York University
Eshter Armah, journalist, playwright
Rich Blint, New York University
Marcellus Blount, Columbia University
Nicholas Boggs, Columbia University
Herb Boyd, Baldwin Biographer
Jennifer Brody, Duke University


18

01 2011

Censorship of Picasso’s and Lene Berg Stalin

Triple Canopy Issue #4 – Stalin by Picasso by Lene Berg part 1 from triple canopy on Vimeo.

 

In 1953, Pablo Picasso was commissioned by Louis Aragon, editor for the French communist weekly newspaper, Les Lettres Francaises to commemorate the death of Russian Communist leader Joseph Stalin. Picasso reluctantly took the assignment at the urging of his mistress Francoise GIlot, who insisted he take the opportunity to work with Aragon.

The sketch Picasso delivered to Aragon was a characterization done in his reductive, modernist style. Aragon eagerly published the portrait, but what happened next was a surprise to both parties. Offended by Picasso’s use of an exaggerated moustache and insidiously feminine features. Aragon was besieged by a flurry of letters and verbal complaints. Both the artist and the editor found themselves at the center of a controversy that was raging out of control.

Despite the editor’s profuse apology to the communist community, the outcry was not as easily silenced. Readers questioned whether Picasso was or was not honoring Stalin’s memory. They wondered if Picasso’s rendition of Stalin as if he were “in drag” was a cynical portrayal meant to mock this powerful leader. Due to overwhelming complaints from the membership both Picasso and Aragon French communist members were eventually expelled.

The use of Stalin’s image became the center of another artistic controversy in the fall of 2008, when Norwegian artist Lene Berg installed three flag banners—one, a monumental reproduction of Picasso’s portrait, flanked by small-scale of black and white photographs of Picasso and Stalin that functioned as architectural pillars on the front facade of the Cooper Union foundation building in New York City. The exhibition was titled, “Stalin by Picasso or Portrait of a Women with Moustache.”

The exhibition installation included two video’s and two books derived from vintage publication materials on the cultural and political climate of the cold war as well as the current international political climate. Narrated by Berg the video’s explored the paradoxes of politics. Cutout images and news clippings replayed out past events. The interactive book’s, constructed with pockets that held portraits and transcribed letters and news clippings.

But five days into the installation, the banners were taken down, with no notice or explanation offered to Berg or to Sara Reisman, associate dean of Cooper Union’s School of Art and curator of the exhibition. The school eventually issued an explanation, which cited a lack of city building permits, as well as complaints from the local Ukrainian-American community. Unknown to Berg, the exhibition coincided with the 75th anniversary of the 1930s Holodomor incident, in which Stalin’s regimen caused a famine that devastated the Russian Ukrainian population.

Berg could have questioned if the angry response from the Ukrainian community ironically echoed the voice of Stalin’s harsh censorship of speech and creative freedom? In her own protest, Lene Berg insisted that the interior components of her exhibition, including the videos and two handmade books, be closed. She also launched her own campaign through the NYCLU(New York Civil Liberties Union). In a prepared statement Donna Lieberman, NYCLU executive director, suggested that, “society’s response to offensive speech is criticism and information, and not censorship.” At the urging of friends and other artist’s Berg used the local press and blog platforms to champion her own rights to creative freedom. A series of articles in the New York Times questioned the city’s building department policies, as well as the Cooper Union position, while blogs debated over the local community’s lack of understanding of artistic freedom. The discussion included previous government and art institutions disagreements including the Brooklyn Museum, over the content of the “Sensation” exhibition, in which artist Chris Ofili’s use of dung in his painting of the Virgin Mary—prompted the museum to post guards and rope off his work. Then Mayor Guillani issued threats against the institution to withdraw city funding. Other incidents discussed included the city parks department closing down a Brooklyn College MFA exhibition at Cadman Plaza due to community complaints of its sexually suggestive content.  In her final statement through NYCLU, Berg stated, “What is important to me now is that the installation is down and is that there is a public discussion on what happened and why.”  She went on to state,  “It’s deeply troubling that freedom of expression was so quickly abandoned, but my hope is that this controversy will force people to continue the discussion about the power of politics and representation. No authority or institution should silence free speech or censor art.”
The issue of censorship and an artist’s first amendment rights to freedom of speech and artistic expression should never cease. As city or university museums continue to show artists whose work focuses on timely social and political issues, we must encourage government to protect their rights.

Tags:

06

12 2010

GLIDE10: Fabiola Berdiel + Cynthia Lawson Development through Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, and Design.

GLIDE10: Fabiola Berdiel + Cynthia Lawson Development through Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, and Design presenters brings us up-to-date on Parsons School of Design ongoing mission of incorporating social responsibility in to learning processes as applied to several design disciplines such as product, architecture and more.

One great aspect of Parsons School of Design  program is there hybridity of bringing students together from various disciplines to share information to build stronger coherent knowledge bases. The challenge is instructors function as facilitators, this mode of teaching forces the students to take a more interactive role to immerse themselves fully in there projects, and learn new platforms of studying beyond formal and informal methods of learning.  Students also have the opportunity to acquire primary research through traveling to developing/emerging  countries and explore various modes of practices while interacting with local people,  investigating new materials and methods to enhance new ways of design thinking. This provides the student with practical and hands-on experiences to build a diverse dialog rooted  in social and cultural constructs not available by just sitting in a classroom or surfing the internet.

 

Questions:
I’m curious how the outcomes are measured by the students each semester? When the students interact with other cultures through travels, how does this figure into the collaborative process? How do these other ethnic cultures respond to the presences of your students?

I love the concept of students taking on the role of facilitators as a shared experience with this projects. How does this method evolve from semester to semester? Do the students view themselves as real agents of change? If so what are some of the outcomes?

What are the draws backs of the participatory process in this model of learning?

For more information click on: deed.parsons.edu