the Black Artist today

What is it that Black Artist are by and large about portraying black people in art. It is as if there is some unwritten law that says a Black Artist must be about black people in painting and sculpture. This is not only what is promoted by those who display and sale black art, this is also what is expected by the people who view and buy black art. This appears to be a response to years of being portrayed by other people in caricature and other undignified ways. But also notice this has gone way beyond accurate portrayals as black faces have appeared in the Euro/American icons, the Madonna and child and also Christ himself as well. I guess if you can paint the world over in your own world view, you can rewrite that part of history that pertains to you. I think the problem in art today is that Black Artist are held hostage by lack of exposure and by what is expected of them. Just like in music the black past is overplayed to the point that the Harlem Renaissance is the peak of black culture and all progress is expected to emerge out from that. Yet jazz itself happened in different places at the same time. So in art we are continually compared to that Harlem Renaissance standard as if nothing has happened since then. But in reality there is a bumper crop of Black Artist who portray black people in various modes of their black lives. I believe that the Black Artist is doing what is popular and also doing what is expected in the realm of art. I also believe that in spite of the progress made Black Artist are held hostage by the thing they are doing and need to be liberated into other design fields until the implements of life bare their mark. Maybe a new arts movement or school of thought will expand the range of the Black Artist in the future.

I try my hand at computer generated art and wonder what are the culture crazed thinking.

Make it Jazz

So very much of art that average folk expect is some representstion of real life. It can range from abstraction to photorealism. Once in a while people will even forsake their normally traditional and conservative choices for something different. "My Favorite Things" by Julie Andrews, then by John Coltrane.........

By taking a broader look at what black design could be, we force the hand of the established notion and redefine what it is, we "make it jazz" and that my friends is what design is all about, using the sights and sounds and materials around us and transforming them into a world-view, my story becomes history.

I am not so proud

I am not so proud of my so called culture that I refuse to say that a lot of African things are not pleasant to look at. Perhaps I am too American, but a lot of stuff is just plain ugly. I am not one to gather about myself African things just because there are some history or religious meaning behind them. It's also African to innovate, improve, adorn, etc.....

Is it black enough?

Why is it that everyone expects black art to be about people? I mean art depicting people. I guess the folk who buy and sell black art can't tell if is really black art unless there are black people in it. So why must there be so much emphsis on the race/culture thing? Is there a black tradition that artist must pay tribute to everytime paint hits the canvas? Yes we have the importance of roots but eventually fruit is important also. I just don't want to be accused of not being black enough or being too black, neither of which expresses who I am.

Influence

Every person is influenced by another person no matter how hard we try not to be. So who influenced me?
Peter Max - cartoons of substance, stars and universes
Roy Lichtenstein - cartoons of cartoons, explosions of print
Frank Stella - vibrant form
Calder - balances that balance the balance
Isamu Noguchi - pureness of form
Nancy Crow - quilts of pattern and color
Lots of potters, textile artist
Jean Dubuffet - wild space filling, primitive, great confusion
the Ndebele wall painters of South Africa
Ernest Trova - sculpture
Syd Mead, Roger Dean, Joe Columbo - art and architecture

my art is a struggle

My art is a struggle between meaningless forms and the balance of logic, like dreams waiting to materalize, the substance that makes the forms must submit to the forces of tangible reality, meaning time and gravity and value. But where are the cultural clues? Where are the "I can relate to that" hooks, the He's about that too", the hidden meaning......

It's the logic of meaningless forms, morphing and moving, submiting to materalizing forces then breaking free to a new form, a new reality, but oh the balence, the energy, as if for a brief encounter you can see so clearly then without changing it shifts into meaningless forms, but the balance, the energy is transfered to you, like living in Calder's playground.

An afro-american artist

What a draftsman does is draw with lines to convey an idea or reveal an idea or describe an idea etc. It is the link between the concept and the reality. Sometimes the lines themselves are an obsession as if the line itself is more important than the thing illustrated. Lines are a playgroung upon which our minds can play.....

Thus it is that years of drawing living things versus years of drawing schematics, yet here is art in the interplay of balances and rhythms......