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Speak No Evil, Marcus Robins |
The Source
Ponder the source. Is it a place, a point of time, an initial urge, a spark of inspiration?
Such an open-ended concept. It conjures visions both personal and metaphysical.
Perhaps an individual thinks of mother, father, child – love. On the wider scale of nature and the planet, words such as earth, its clay and garden – its river of life. Those spiritual among us may think of a creator. Those philosophical may imagine some rational origin of the universe itself. Humanists may think of the beginning of us; people, language, psyche and myth. And the ways and the customs – from first history, forward.
And what is a source as compared to a soul. Are they not each both essential and original?
Kyng Rhodes has organized a show of artists, The Source. It is an exhibition that speaks to his answer of such questions and displays artists whose works provide their answers as well.
The show is described in the exhibition statement that accompanies the work, a portion of which is quoted as follows,
“The Source brings together works that examine the identities, histories, and shared experiences of the African diaspora. Through painting, fashion, and other forms of artistic expression, the exhibit considers both inherited histories and contemporary realities...”
It features artwork by Lyndy Bazile, Phylicia Carr, Aaron Coleman, Deonna Craig, India Cruse-Griffin, Caleb Davis-Barney, Fitz, Gary Gee, Quintin Griffin, Michael Angelo W, Kevin Nance-West, Francis Nwosu, Andre Parnell, Dana Powell-Smith, Marcus Robins, Ash Robinson and Tania Wineglass.
Pattern's Thread.
When approaching the glass wall entry and doors to the gallery, the visitor confronts an image of endurance and generative strength with the large oil on canvas painting, Duo Body Bather, by Lyndy Bazile.
Bazile's colors are simplified with warm tones of orange and yellow in the background and cool blue and teal for the figure and the pool of water. A divided two has become a more powerful one in a nurturing water. Rest and peace seem to bend the two heads of the figure toward sleep, although their eyes remain open and aware. Combined they appear as mighty as a mountain, or at least a rock upon which a mountain is made.
Once inside the space of the gallery, the visitor is surrounded by a number of works that share a similar energy and color as contained in Bazile's painting.
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Duo Body Bather, Lyndy Bazile |
Phylicia Carr's Surrender shows a woman in a sinuous profile. Her body seems to support a canopy of natural bounty – flowers, leaves, fruit – as if she if the trunk and roots upon which the bounty is supported and conveyed. In addition to the woman's graceful lines, the canvas is enlivened with motion by a striped pattern of parallels running across a background of teal and yellow. The overall vibe of the work is one of reward – to accept and endure, and to flourish.
The painting Soul Sista by Fitz also shows a woman at a center of a patterned color picture plane. The painting is a feisty and playful portrait of the protagonist named. Fitz has created her, stylized her with the power of a comic book hero. How so? She is an alluring wild woman, dressed in bright orange, animal print, cut-off shorts and a top of only green leafy vines.
Her make-up and golden arm bracelets only heighten the transfixing attention she commands. She is pictured amid a busy background of orange, black, blue, brown and gold. Recurring chevron shapes point up and down, left and right, but try as they may, they cannot distract the eye from the figure herself.
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Come see about me, Dana Powell-Smith |
Dana Powell-Smith's acrylic painting, Come see about me, is a head and shoulders portrait of mainly orange, but also blue and green against a black background. The painting is a picture of pattern and color more than a likeness or emotional study. The woman emerges from the her many pieces. Polka dots, flowers, stripes and color fields make up the planes and surface of the face and costume. The eyes stare out calmly at the viewer from the stylized orchestra of pattern of almost cubist design.
Andre Parnell's Waking Perceptions is a puzzle and a poem. A child is realistically portrayed in facial features and anatomy, although colored as if carved from marble or dusted by chalk. The child is the age of cherubs often portrayed in historical art. That age just beyond the blissful innocence of the baby years, yet before the school days of regimented learning.
Atop the child's head are at least twenty newborn-looking babies – infants snuggling and sleeping all among each other, in a form that suggests either a hair style or hat at first glance. Atop them all, one among them has aroused from the peace of sleep, with head held high, eyes opened, surprised, and lips parted as if to speak or cry.
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Waking Perceptions, Andre Parnell |
The larger main figure looks out from beneath what goes on above its head, that is, the stirring little one awakened, and presents pursed lips, a look of uncertainty, and a downward glance away from the viewer.
Speak No Evil by Marcus Robins (top of page) is a dreamlike tableau created with the lifelike surrealism of a type seen in an artist like Salvador Dali. Components float, hover and arrange about the picture in a freeze-frame that can be experienced as a homage to the title of Maya Angelou's debut memoir from 1969.
A gilded bird's cage confines a person's head within its shiny bars. The person's face is further restrained by a gilded mask that covers the nose and mouth. Outside the shimmering prison, a bird is free, its wings fully extended in climbing flight. But is the freedom real? Is the bird real? It is mostly translucent as if carved from glass or ice, or formed of a soap bubble. But with a girdle of gold banded across its body, its form is dissected. It is both solid and see-through at the same time.
The room of the cage and the person and the bird, is full of floating or falling flower petals. Perhaps a pointing, golden arrow is a clue. It is aiming toward the bottom of the picture, so perhaps the petals are pulled by gravity, falling down.
Heritage Visualized.
Walking further into the gallery, shared histories and experiences are revealed. Two photographic prints by Francis Nwosu each convey with a simple visual clarity more open-ended themes. A hand reaches, grasping with out-stretched fingers in Ascension, and a hand cradles the warmth of bright light in Illumination I.
India Cruse-Griffin's Tangled Yet Not Broken is a mixed media sculpture of a young woman wrapped in a drapery of clothing, cloths-lines and clothes-pins. Her glance is cast downward, her eyes are almost closed, her arms are limp at her side. But her stature is standing, her head high on her shoulders. She seems resolute in her work.
(This blog covered the busy season of exhibition by Cruse-Griffin earlier this year, here)
Daddy's New Car by Kevin Nance-West shows a car at a time when they were mighty and large, perhaps the late 1940s or early 1950s behind two boys at a time when they were just growing and small. About the first years of school age, the boys face the viewer, and an uncertain future. It is a vision from the past and toward the future. A movement seems promised by the engine and the wheels and by the youth of the boys.
(Nance-West's recent solo exhibit at Harrison Center was also covered by this blog, here)
More abstract is Aaron Coleman's It Was All So Simple, a 16-layer screen print. It is a mix of elements including text, color, graffiti marks. The location is an abandoned storefront, its security gate with a discarded car license plate and a fallen store-hours sign.
The main message is the text in block letters which is a close paraphrase a song lyrics passed from generation to generation, from Barbara Streisand to Wu-Tang Clan. Of course song lyrics often quote the common questions asked of people about love and life and the true meaning of things. Perhaps it was just such a message painted on a wall that Coleman saw. Regardless of the source of inspiration, it lingers in its image of fading paint, a nostalgic mirage of better times.
Both abstract and real is Deonna Craig's mixed media Of Ceremony and Captivity: Scarred. At a distance it is a monochrome work a dark gray/black. Woodchip pieces, coated with paint the same color as the picture's ground – a deep charcoal.
Rows and rows and column upon column of the pieces – as if tick marks on a tally sheet – attempting to number the innumerable. Each piece unique and singular in itself, but nameless in the overall crowd.
Is this a record of a thousand injuries and insults that have left their burns and scars, or a broad and somber totem of a people's endurance? Or is something holier or more transcendent imagined in the rite of darkness it portrays?
An interesting ceramic piece, a portrait bust or mask of sorts by Gary Gee, is Head on a Swivel.
A street smart man with wide open eyes that allow you to peer into the depths of his brain. Graffiti marks lurk in the shadows there, in contrast to the gold grill on several teeth of his wide grin. There is something uneasy in his baring of teeth. And it's certainly something different than happiness or a joke we see when we view the head from the rear. Eyeballs all over the red cap look out in all directions.
Sticking to the streets, is Quintin Griffin's photograph, Red Line. A sunlit scene is shown from a slightly elevated, bird-on-a-wire view. A single figure, just one man alone, surrounded by some of his things on the bench next to him and the ground at his feet.
A geometric jumble of repeating urban forms surround him – three hanging stop lights above, three pylons to the side, a row of glass panes behind him and countless car lot, light bulbs stringing across the picture. The replication and repetition of these inanimate things draw attention to the figure and his solitude. There is no wood or lawn on this Woodlawn Avenue high noon. Just concrete and asphalt, metal, brick and glass – and the flesh and blood of a breathing man.
Sight and Seen.
At the rear of the gallery space are a few pieces in which fashion and decoration step forward.
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Say What?, Ash Robinson |
Say What? is a mixed media wall piece by Ash Robinson. It seems a head portrayed in the hard-edged, simple lines of a retro 1980s decoration. It even has a mirror element at the center face of the work, that absorbs the viewer and reflects their image back. But unlike the shiny chrome and brass of '80s design, the mirror here is black. The surrounding forms and textures in black and white and brown vary from matte to tufted and fabric-like, to stained wood and louvered.
Da Genesis, an oil on canvas painting by Caleb Davis-Barney, is perhaps the most abstract of all artworks in the show. It has color fields, organically shaped of white, ivory, brown, black and blue. It is perhaps a natural world that inspires the work, with its moon-like sphere, cloud and flower forms, and the color of land and sea. Maybe, though, it is not so abstract at all, and it shows the days of creation at the beginning of time. Land, sea and moon are easily imagined. Perhaps the painting's patterns allude to the people created days later, and their later urge to beauty and decoration shared by all descendants around the globe.
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Da Genesis, Caleb Davis-Barney |
La Vierge au Long Cou by Tania Wineglass, is a glazed clay stonewear portrait plaque that is reminiscent of porcelain miniatures in the intimate connection and subject matter of personal portraiture. It's exotic title may reflect some broader meaning than the happiness the viewer can't help but share with the dazzle of the smiling lady portrayed.
High fashion is presented in Nigel Badman's footwear and handbag designs. Italian pebble-grained leather, pony hair, suede and cotton are the components of the tasteful pieces.
The Variegated Tote is a bag with an overall pyramidal form. This shape is clothed in three colors, in a checkerboard of squares and stripes. The palomino pony top handles blend seamlessly into the vertical stripes that band together at the bag's center, between the checks.
The Princeton Loafer design appears both casual and elegant. Simple intersecting lines and the pebble grain, and the maker's mark embossed into the leather, complete a minimal and pleasing look.
Heritage, voice, pattern and fashion are all rolled into one in the final artwork in The Source.
Standing at the back of the show in a corner is War Is Always Ugly, a fashion design, or maybe a post modern textile, by Michael Angelo W.
It is created – sewn together – with cloth described as 'upcycled USGI military top-load bags and black ticking stripe cotton. ' Or said another way, the rough and ready fabric of sturdy work wear (or mattresses) and Army duffel bags.
Weariness, toil and sacrifice are implied by the use of these materials, and a point of view, by its title. But Michael Angelo W's ensemble of clothing is statement enough. We see power and style, loud and clear.
War Is Always Ugly (detail), Michael Angelo W
The Source is a many-faceted display of art mediums and techniques. The show is displayed in the Brett Waller Gallery at Newfields through August 16.
Mark Diekhoff, July 2026
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